Applied Acoustics 62 (2001) 447459

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Technical note

Experimental study of the absorption

characteristics of some porous brous materials
Chao-Nan Wang *, Jiunn-Hwan Torng
Department of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
Received 30 July 1999; received in revised form 4 November 1999; accepted 5 June 2000

Abstract
The sound absorption characteristics of a porous brous material, that is manufactured
and used in Taiwan, is investigated. The ow resistivity and the absorption coecient are the
important parameters that are determined. The measured ow resistivity of the glass and rock
wool samples were scattered in a wider range and usually greater than previously reported in
the literature. This means that the manufacturing quality control needs further improvement.
Additionally, the characteristic impedance of the porous material is estimated by the model of
Allard et al and consequently the normal impedance and sound absorption coecient is
obtained. # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Porous materials used for noise control are generally categorized as brous medium or porous foam. Porous foam may be manufactured from many dierent
materials. It is therefore not easy to make a systematic study of foams. Fibrous
media usually consists of glass or rock wool, have high acoustic absorption, and are
reproof. Therefore, they are widely used material in the noise control engineering.
Prediction of the acoustic properties of porous media is important because of its
variety of applications. However, the structure of porous materials is complicated
and an analytical solution is not easily performed. Zwikker and Kosten [1] and Biot
[2] proposed theoretical models for porous material about ve decades ago. More
recently, Attenborough [3], Allard et al. [4], Stinson and Champoux [5,6], and others
have modied the method to make it more applicable. These methods require
adjustment of some parameters in the circular solution to t the more complicated
* Corresponding author.
0003-682X/01/$ - see front matter # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S0003-682X(00)00043-8

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C.-N. Wang, J.-H. Torng / Applied Acoustics 62 (2001) 447459

cases. Wilson [7,8] developed a relaxation-model that has few parameters and can be
applied with reasonable accuracy to any porous material. In addition to these theoretical models, Delany and Bazley [9] have proposed an empirical formula to estimate the characteristic impedance and propagation coecient of brous absorbent
materials. This formula has been widely used to describe sound propagation in
brous material although it is not suitable for very low and very high frequency.
In the present study, a brous material manufactured in Taiwan is investigated.
We measured the ow resistivity of the glass and rock wool and compare to that
reported in the literature. The purpose is to understand the quality of brous material and to establish the local data. The absorption coecient of a dierent material
is also checked.
2. Experimental setup
The parameters, ow resistivity and porosity, of a brous porous material widely
used in Taiwan will be measured in this study. The experimental setup for the measurement of the ow resistivity of material with dierent bulk densities and thickness
is shown in Fig. 1a. The denition of the ow resistivity R is expressed as

Fig. 1. (a) The experiment setup for the ow resistivity measurement; (b) the experiment setup for the
absorption coecient measurement.

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Dp
VL

449

where Dp is the pressure drop across the material, V is the steady-state velocity
induced by the pressure drop and L is the thickness of the material. It should be
noted that the brous materials are generally anisotropic. In this study only the ow
resistivity in the normal direction (the direction perpendicular to the surface of the
panel) is measured.
The measurement of porosity is conducted in a measuring cup. At rst the volume
Vt of the material is measured. And then the material is saturated with water in a
measuring cup with xed quantity of water to measure the volume Vg of the glass
ber. The material has been brayed in water to reduce the air bubbles remaining in
the medium and to yield reliable results. Thus the porosity  is estimated by


Vt Vg
Vt

To verify the accuracy of the model of Allard et al., an experiment, shown in Fig.
1b, for measuring the sound absorption coecient was designed. If the distance
between microphones 1 and 2 is s, the absorption coecient , according to Chung
and Blaser [10], is expressed as


 H12 f Hi f 2

f 1 jR1 j2 1 
Hr f H12 f

where Hi eiks , Hr eiks and H12 is the transfer function of the signals detected by
microphones 1 and 2.
3. Impedance and absorption coecient
A theoretical model proposed by Allard et al. [11] is adopted to describe the propagation of sound through porous materials. To take into account the inertial and
the viscous coupling eects between the rigid frame and the air in an air-saturated
porous material, the dynamic density ~! proposed by Johnson et al. [12] is used i.e.
"

1=2 #
R
4i21 0 !
1
4
~! 0 1 1
i1 0 !
R2 `2 2
where  is the viscosity of air, 1 is the tortuosity (structure form factor), ` is the
characteristic length. The parameter ` depends only on the geometry of the frame
and can be expressed as [12]

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`s

81
R

1=2

The dynamic bulk modulus is governed by the heat exchange in large holes, not as
the viscous eect for dynamic density. Therefore, a dierent characteristic length
and a ow resistivity are required to model the dynamic bulk modulus. According to
the results of Allard et al. [11] given for the brous material, this characteristic
length and ow resistivity are about 2 ` and R=4. Therefore, the dynamic bulk
modulus of air in a porous material is written as [13]

Fig. 2. The measured ow resistivity of glass brous wool of dierent bulk densities.

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0
B
B
K! P0 B
B "
@

451

11
C
C
1

1=2 #C
C
2
R
16i1 0 NPr !
A
1
1
i41 0 NPr !
R2 `2 2

where is the specic heat ratio, P0 is the ambient pressure, NPr is the Prandtl
v
number dened by  c
 , cv is the specic heat per unit mass at constant volume, and
 thermal conductivity.

Fig. 3. The measured ow resistivity of rock wool of dierent bulk densities manufactured by D company.

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Fig. 4. The calculated mean characteristic impedance of glass wool for dierent bulk densities.

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453

Fig 5. The comparison of the calculated and experimental absorption coecient for 24 kg=m3 , 2.5 cm
panel of glass brous wool.

Table 1
The porosity of glass wool
Bulk density (kg/m3)

Porosity  (%)

1x6
20
24
32
48
100
112

98.18
97.86
97.90
97.00
95.78
93.63
92.27

Table 2
The porosity of rock wool
Bulk density (kg/m3)

Porosity  (%)

40
60
80
100

96.56
94.83
93.13
92.66

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Fig. 6. The comparison of calculated and experimental absorption coecient for 32 kg=m3 , 2.5 cm panel
of glass brous wool.

Thus the complex wave number k~ and the characteristic impedance of a porous
material can be obtained by
k~ ! !~!=K!1=2 and Zc ! K!~!1=2 :

Therefore, the absorption coecient of a porous material with a rigid backing is

[14]


Z Zc 2
 :
 1 
Z Zc 

Z is the surface impedance expressed as

Z j

h
i
Zc
cot k~ !L


where L is thickness of sample.

In the present study, the values of some parameters for brous material usually
used in noise control engineering are adopted as follows [11]:

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455

Fig. 7. The calculated absorption coecient for a 2.5 cm panel of glass brous wool backed by a rigid
wall.

Fig. 8. The calculated absorption coecient for a 5 cm panel of glass brous wool back with rigid wall.

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Fig. 9. The calculated characteristic impedance of rock wool for dierent bulk densities.

C.-N. Wang, J.-H. Torng / Applied Acoustics 62 (2001) 447459

 1:84  105 kg m1 s1 ;

P0 101320 N=m2 ;

457

0 1:2 kg=m3 ;

NPr 0:702; 1:4; s 1; 1 1:

4. Results
4.1. Flow resistivity
The brous materials to be considered are glass ber and rock wool. Four companies' products of dierent bulk densities are collected and measured. The
measured ow resistivities for glass and rock wool vs. dierent bulk densities is
shown in Figs. 2 and 3. It is seen that the ow resistivity increases as the bulk density
enlarges. However, the distribution of the data seems scattered in a wider range than
that of reported in the literature [15]. This behavior may reveal that the quality
control needs further improvement to manufacture more stable product. Porosity is
also an important parameter for absorbent material. The measured mean porosity
for glass and rock wool with dierent bulk density is shown in Tables 1 and 2. All
the measured data reveals that the porosity is located between 0.92 and 0.99 that is
similar to that of general glass brous material.

Fig. 10. The calculated absorption coecient for a 5 cm panel of rock wool back with rigid wall.

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C.-N. Wang, J.-H. Torng / Applied Acoustics 62 (2001) 447459

4.2. Characteristic impedance and absorption coecient

From Section 3, the dynamic density and bulk modulus can be evaluated by the
model of Allard et al. and consequently the characteristic impedance and propagation constant of the brous porous media. The calculated mean characteristic
impedance of glass brous material for dierent bulk density are shown in Fig. 4.
The magnitude of the characteristic impedance increases as the bulk density increases. However, at higher frequency the characteristic impedance seems to have the
tendency to converge to a single value. To verify the accuracy of Allard's model, the
sound absorption coecient of two panels of glass brous wool (bulk densities: 24
and 32 kg=m3 ) are measured and compared to that obtained from the theoretical
model as shown in Figs. 5 and 6. Agreement is good and thus the theoretical model
is reliable. Consequently, the absorption coecients of the panel of glass brous
wool with thickness 2.5 and 5 cm for dierent bulk density (i.e. dierent ow resistivity) are calculated and shown in Figs. 7 and 8. The sound absorption coecient
for a 5 cm panel is higher than that of 2.5 cm at low frequency range since the
reactance of the surface impedance is small and closer to zero at this region. The
characteristic impedance and absorption coecient for 5 cm rock wool are shown in
Figs. 9 and 10. The characteristics of these parameters are similar to that of glass
ber. Our calculations suggest that the sound absorption characteristics of glass
ber and rock wool are similar.
5. Conclusions
The characteristics of brous material, glass and rock wool, manufactured and
used in Taiwan have been measured in the present study. The measured ow resistivity scattered in a wider range than in previous studies reported in the literature.
This behavior means that the quality control of manufacturing needs further
improvement. With the model of Allard et al. the dynamic density and bulk modulus can be evaluated and consequently the characteristic impedance and the propagation constant can also be obtained. The calculated sound absorption coecient
reveals that the dierence in noise absorption ability is not obvious for dierent bulk
densities. However, increasing the thickness of the panel will improve the sound
absorption ability, especially in the low frequency range.
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