An experimental investigation has been made of the sound-absorbing properties of liquid-base foams and of their ability to reduce jet noise. Protein, detergent, and polymer foaming agents were used in water solutions. A method of foam generation was developed to permit systematic variation of the foam density. The investigation included measurements of sound-absorption coefficients for both plane normal incidence waves and diffuse sound fields. The intrinsic acoustic properties of foam, e.g., the characteristic impedance and the propagation constant, were also determined. The sound emitted by a 1-in.-diam cold nitrogen jet was measured for subsonic (300 m/sec) and supersonic (422 m/sec) jets, with and without foam injection. Noise reductions up to 10 PNdB were measured.
Liquid-base foams are highly effective sound absorbers. A better understanding of the mechanisms of sound absorption in foams was sought by exploration of a mathematical model of bubble pulsation and coupling and the development of a distributed-parameter mechanical analog. A solution by electric-circuit analogy was thus obtained and transmission-line theory was used to relate the physical properties of the foams to the characteristic impedance and propagation constants of the analog transmission line. Comparison of measured physical properties of the foam with values obtained from measured acoustic impedance and propagation constants and the transmission-line theory showed good agreement. We may therefore conclude that the sound propagation and absorption mechanisms in foam are accurately described by the resonant response of individual bubbles coupled to neighboring bubbles.
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