Development of Instrumentation for the Measurement of the Performance of Acoustic Absorbers

In both fixed and rotary wing aircraft, the move toward lighter structures has resulted in an increase in structural vibration and interior noise. Porous materials have been proposed as acoustic absorbers to reduce this noise. This paper discusses the development of equipment at the NASA Glenn Research Center for characterizing the acoustic performance of porous materials: a flow resistance apparatus to measure the pressure drop across a specimen of porous material, and a standing wave tube that uses a pair of stationary microphones to measure the normal incidence acoustic impedance of a porous material specimen. Specific attention is paid to making this equipment as flexible as possible in terms of specimen sizes need for testing to accommodate the small or irregular sizes often produced during the development phase of a new material. In addition, due to the unknown performance of newly developed material, safety features are included on the flow resistance apparatus to contain test specimens that shed particles or catastrophically fail during testing. Results of measurements on aircraft fiberglass are presented to verify the correct performance of the equipment.