Journal of Theoretical and Computational Acoustics

A discussion is given of early literature pertaining to the theory of vibration from the time of Pythagoras up through 1750. The paper attempts to give an analytical interpretation to early anecdotal works concerning Pythagoras and to publications of Galileo, Huygens, Hooke, Taylor, John Bernoulli, Leibniz and Euler. To bridge the “culture gap,” mathematical developments by the latter cited authors are, whenever appropriate, rephrased in modern notation, using, for the most part, only those techniques that should have been well known to the authors at the time. The emphasis is on what might be loosely called the physics (or the mathematical physics) of vibration.

Biot’s theory of porous media is discussed critically, with emphasis on the first 1956 JASA paper that purports to apply for low frequencies. It is pointed out that the use of two and only two displacement fields has a certain arbitrariness, and that models with additional displacement fields are possible. Biot’s expression for the strain-energy per unit volume is justified in part, but it is pointed out that additional terms might be included. The theory in the low-frequency limit is discussed in detail, and the partitioning of the disturbance into three distinct types of fields is discussed. It is shown that there is sufficient latitude in the choice of coefficients in the Biot low-frequency model that the coefficients can be adjusted to fit all the major parameters associated with the three types of disturbances at low frequencies, but it is conjectured that the model will lead to inconsistencies for prediction of minor parameters. Unless measurements of such minor parameters are known from independent experiments, the model cannot be tested quantitatively. The use of the low-frequency Biot model at higher frequencies is discussed, and it is shown that in the high-frequency limit there are always two propagating modes where the displacement fields have zero curl. It is also shown that the model predicts the attenuation at high frequencies to be independent of frequency. The validity of such high-frequency predictions is questioned, and it is argued that the Biot low-frequency model has substantial wide-spread validity at low frequencies.

Several methods for handling sloping fluid–solid interfaces with the elastic parabolic equation are tested. A single-scattering approach that is modified for the fluid–solid case is accurate for some problems but breaks down when the contrast across the interface is sufficiently large and when there is a Scholte wave. An approximate condition for conserving energy breaks down when a Scholte wave propagates along a sloping interface but otherwise performs well for a large class of problems involving gradual slopes, a wide range of sediment parameters, and ice cover. An approach based on treating part of the fluid layer as a solid with low shear speed is developed and found to handle Scholte waves and a wide range of sediment parameters accurately, but this approach needs further development. The variable rotated parabolic equation is not effective for problems involving frequent or continuous changes in slope, but it provides a high level of accuracy for most of the test cases, which have regions of constant slope. Approaches based on a coordinate mapping and on using a film of solid material with low shear speed on the rises of the stair steps that approximate a sloping interface are also tested and found to produce accurate results for some cases.

In acoustics, knowledge of the impulse response of a system is often important. While impulse responses may be measured, they may also be predicted using numerical methods. This work considers the generation of impulse responses from frequency-domain finite element solutions. It is shown that these impulse responses, obtained by inverse Fourier transformation, are noncausal. Through error analysis, it is demonstrated that the noncausality can be reduced by increasing the duration of a source signal used to excite a simulated system. It is found that increasing the source signal duration increases the dispersion-related phase error present in the simulated impulse responses. The findings of this study are used to simulate an impulse response for a system with a nonuniform, frequency-dependent, complex impedance boundary condition.

In low Mach number aeroacoustics, the well-known disparity of scales allows applying hybrid simulation models using different meshes for flow and acoustics, which leads to a fast computational procedure. The hybrid workflow of the perturbed convective wave equation involves three steps: (1) perform unsteady incompressible flow computations on a subdomain; (2) compute the acoustic sources and (3) simulate the acoustic field, using a mesh specifically suited. These aeroacoustic methods seek for a robust, conservative and computational efficient mesh-to-mesh transformation of the aeroacoustic sources. In this paper, the accuracy and the application limitations of a cell-centroid-based conservative interpolation scheme is compared to the computationally advanced cut-volume cell approach in 2D and 3D. Based on a previously validated axial fan model where spurious artifacts have been visualized, the results are evaluated systematically using a grid convergence study. To conclude, the monotonic convergence of both conservative interpolation schemes is demonstrated. Regarding arbitrary mesh deformation (for example, the motion of the vocal folds in human phonation), the study reveals that the computationally simpler cell-centroid-based conservative interpolation can be the method of choice.

In this paper, a semi-analytical framework, based on the scaled boundary finite element method (SBFEM), is proposed, to study interior acoustic problems in the mid-frequency range in two and three dimensions. The SBFEM shares the advantages of both the finite element method (FEM) and the boundary element method (BEM). Like the FEM, it does not require the fundamental solution (Green’s function) and similar to the BEM only the boundary is discretized, thus reducing the spatial dimensionality by one. The solution within the domain is represented analytically, while on the boundary, it is represented by finite elements. Although different boundary representations are possible, only the Lagrangian description is investigated in this paper. The proposed framework is validated using closed-form solutions, and direct comparisons are made with the conventional FEM based on Lagrangian description; this will be demonstrated using two 2D cavities from literature as well as one 3D cavity. The improved accuracy and reduced computational time can be attributed to the semi-analytical formulation combined with the boundary discretization.