Ensemble averaged surface normal impedance of material using an in-situ technique: Preliminary study using boundary element method

An in-situ measurement technique of a material surface normal impedance is proposed. It includes a concept of “ensemble averaged” surface normal impedance that extends the usage of obtained values to various applications such as architectural acoustics and computational simulations, especially those based on the wave theory. The measurement technique itself is a refinement of a method using a two-microphone technique and environmental anonymous noise, or diffused ambient noise, as proposed by Takahashi et al. [Appl. Acoust. 66, 845–865 (2005)]. Measured impedance can be regarded as time-space averaged normal impedance at the material surface. As a preliminary study using numerical simulations based on the boundary element method, normal incidence and random incidence measurements are compared numerically: results clarify that ensemble averaging is an effective mode of measuring sound absorption characteristics of materials with practical sizes in the lower frequency range of 100–1000 Hz, as confirmed by p...