Measurement of the Surface Reflectance of an Acoustic Wave Using Wave Packets Propagating in a Circular Waveguide

Abstract:
The main idea of the measurement presented in this paper was to separate the incident wave from the reflected wave. For this purpose, short wave packets and a sufficiently long waveguide with a circular cross-section were used. Several types of wave packets were developed and used in the experiment. We found that a wave packet of 5 ms duration could be propagated in a waveguide of length 5.6 meters without significant sound level losses. We used an audio interface operating at a sampling rate of 96 kHz in the measurements. The limit of wave propagation without dispersion phenomenon was determined. The developed measurement methodology made it possible to maintain the same air temperature along the entire length of the tested waveguide since short pulses did not cause the speaker temperature to rise. Avoiding this effect reduced the measurement uncertainty of the reflection coefficient.