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The Effect of Air Gap Thickness on Sound Absorption Coefficient of

Polyurethane Foam

Article  in  Defence S and T Technical Bulletin · November 2012

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THE EFFECT OF AIR GAP THICKNESS ON SOUND ABSORPTION
COEFFICIENT OF POLYURETHANE FOAM

Mohd Moesli Muhammad*, Noor Aishah Sa’at, Hasril Naim, Mahdi Che Isa, Nik
Hassanuddin Nik Yussof & Mohd Subhi Din Yati.

Marine Materials Research Group, Maritime Technology Division (BTM), Science

& Technology Research Institute for Defence (STRIDE), Ministry of Defence,
Malaysia
*
Email: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Polyurethane foam is widely used in noise control engineering to absorb sound. This
paper investigates the effect of air gap thickness behind polyurethane foam on the
sound absorption coefficient for low and high frequency sounds using the impedance
tube method. The polyurethane foam test samples were prepared with thickness of
25 mm, with two different diameters; 29 and 100 mm for high (1.0 to 6.4 kHz) and
low (100 Hz to 1.6 kHz) frequency measurements respectively. The foam was
subjected to microscopic observation under an optical microscope for pore size
analysis. It was observed that the sample has a honeycomb structure with the
majority of pores’ diameters being less than 1 mm. The measurement was carried
out for six different air gap thicknesses; 0, 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 mm. The results
showed that introducing an air gap behind the sample influences the sound
absorption coefficient, which increased especially for higher frequency sounds until
the optimum value was obtained. It also showed that the frequency of maximum
peaks for varying air gap thicknesses was different, with the peaks for larger air gap
thicknesses shifting towards lower frequencies. However, this combination of
polyurethane foam and air gap was not able to absorb low frequency sounds,
especially below than 250 Hz.

Keyword: Acoustical material; polyurethane foam; air gap thickness; sound

absorption coefficient; impedance tube.

1. INTRODUCTION

The applications of noise control are at present given significant priority in various
industries, such as automotive, manufacturing and ship building. It plays an
important role in creating an acoustically pleasant environment. This can be
achieved when the intensity of sound is reduced to a certain level that is not harmful
to human ears. Various techniques can be applied for this, which employ different
kinds of materials. One such technique is using acoustical materials to absorb sound
(Gracia-Valles et al., 2008; Yang & Wu, 2011; Jaouen & Becot, 2011). These
acoustical materials are available in the market as fibrous or porous materials, and in
various types, such as nonwovens, fibrous glass, mineral wools and foams (Ersoy &
Kucuk, 2009; Arenas & Crocker, 2010; Kino & Ueno, 2007). Generally, all these
types of materials are made from polymeric or rubber based materials, due to low
cost of production and their flexibility, making it easy to cut and form into complex
shapes. However, for acoustical materials in high temperature applications, such jet
engines, most of them are made from ceramics that are hard and fire resistant (Zhang
et al., 2006; Cuiyun et al., 2012; Fuji et al., 2006).

The main function of acoustical materials is to reduce the acoustic energy of sound
waves that pass through it (Figure 1). This can be performed using resistive
materials that consist of porous structure which change sound energy into heat. This
can happen when energy is changed due to frictional forces between sound waves
and the cell walls in the pore structure (Fang et al., 2007). In other words, the further
the distance sound waves travel through the medium of porous structure, the higher
the amount of sound energy which is dissipated. From the reduction of sound
energy, it can be assumed that this energy is being absorbed by the acoustical
materials. Therefore, the amount of sound energy that is absorbed represents the
sound absorption characteristics which describe performance of the acoustical
materials.

Figure 1: High sound wave energy is reduced after passing through the acoustical
material.
(Source: Bies & Hansen, 2009)

In practice, there are two methods used to install acoustical materials; either using an
air gap or not. It can be attached directly, or some air gap thickness can be created
from the wall. The methods of installing acoustical materials play an important role
in improve noise absorption. By introducing an air gap behind an acoustical material
any residues of incident sound waves that are not absorbed or transformed into heat
energy after transmission through the acoustical material will face additional
resistance through the air medium. The mechanism of sound waves dissipating in the
air medium is known as the Helmoltz resonance effect. It excites some of the sound
waves’ frequencies, causing them to oscillate at greater amplitude. When the energy
reaches the maximum level, the sound waves become weak due to friction with air
particles, which converts sound energy into heat (Zhang et al., 2012; Norton &
Karszub, 2003; Crocker, 2007).

Previous studies show that the combination of acoustical materials and air gap
thickness has significant impacts on the sound absorption coefficient. Rosli et al.
(2009) reported that the air gap layers within the coir fibre sound absorption panels
improve the sound absorption coefficient for medium and high frequencies. Seddeq
(2009) found that the sound absorption coefficient increases when plastic fibre
absorbers are associated with air gap. The advantage of installing acoustical
materials with air gaps is to reduce costs by maintaining the thickness of the
acoustical materials while improving the sound absorption coefficient.

This study is aimed at investigating the effect of air gap thickness on the sound
absorption coefficient of polyurethane foam. It is a porous type of acoustical
material which has been widely used in many applications, including construction,
automotive, machinery and electronics. Even though polyurethane foam is excellent
for noise control applications, not much attention has been provided on the
combination of polyurethane foam with air gaps. The findings of this study
demonstrate that adding an air gap behind polyurethane foam improves it sound
absorption coefficient for high frequencies applications.

2. METHODS FOR EVALUATING THE PERFORMANCE OF

ACOUSTICAL MATERIALS

There are two different methods available to evaluate the performance of acoustical
materials, which are reverberant room and impedance tube (Sagartzazu et al., 2007;
Ingard, 2010; Doutres, 2010). In general, the measurement is to study the effects of
exposure of materials to known sound fields. Both methods are able to collect the
properties of sound absorption materials, such as sound absorption coefficient,
reflection coefficient and surface impedance. Sound absorption coefficient is the
property that is most referred to by engineers and scientists in evaluating acoustical
environments (Crocker, 2007). By looking at the value of the sound absorption
coefficient, the ability of acoustical materials to absorb the sound energy can be
predicted, and it is used in calculation at early stage of design. The reverberant room
method needs expensive measuring equipment, a qualified acoustician and a large
size of samples (Scien, 2011; Bies & Hansen, 2009). Therefore, this method is
limited and cannot be expanded upon due to the high costs involved in setting up the
facility and preparing the samples.
In the impedance tube method, the test sample is tested within a rigid tube, in which
the sound is internally guided, forced to propagate along the tube’s axis and hits the
back plate (Crocker, 2007). Figure 2 shows the schematics of the impedance tube
method. In general, the main components of the impedance tube are a loudspeaker,
two microphones of 0.25 in and back plate. The loudspeaker placed at one of the
tube end creates a sinusoidal pressure disturbance that propagates down the tube
with the test sample positioned at the other end of tube near the back plate. The back
plate’s function is to reflect the incident waves and to hold the sample in the proper
position. Its position is unfixed and is moveable if the measurement is carried out for
air gap environments. The two microphones are in fixed positions and both of them
measure simultaneously the incident wave before the sound wave enters the test
sample, and reflected wave after the sound waves propagates through the test
sample, hits the back plate and travels back towards the loudspeaker. The signals of
incident and reflected waves from the microphones are analysed using a signal
analyser based on the transfer function method. Using this method, the ratio of
reflected and incident waves is obtained, which represents the sound absorption
coefficient of the acoustical material (Doutres, 2010).

Figure 2: Schematic of the impedance tube method.

(Source: Crocker, 2007)

Most of the measurements for sound absorption coefficient are carried out using two
tubes of different diameters; large and small diameters for low and high frequency
sound respectively. Both measurement and design of the impedance tubes are
according to the international standards, which are ISO (1998) and JIS (2007).
According to Crocker (2007), to ensure that only plane waves, with no transverse
waves, enter tube, the lengths of the tubes shall exceed 0.25λ, while the diameters
shall not exceed 0.58λ, where λ is the wavelength of sound in air. For example,
tubes with diameter of 100 mm and length of 910 mm are useful for sounds in the
range 90 Hz to 1.8 kHz. In order to conduct the measurement over the range of 90
Hz to 6.0 kHz, two different tube sizes are required. Therefore, many of the
impedance tube products available in the market have a large tube of 100 mm
diameter for low frequency sounds and a small tube of 29 mm diameter for high
frequency sounds. Based on the diameters of the tubes, the frequency ranges are 100
Hz to 1.6 kHz and 1.0 to 6.4 kHz for low and high frequency sounds respectively.
However, as the frequency range between 1.0 to 1.6 kHz is repeated for both the low
and high impedance tubes, variations of the results may exist. Therefore, in order to
increase accuracy, many researchers suggest that the values of sound absorption
coefficient be computed based on the averages of the measured data.

In the impedance tube, which is a close boundary system, the calculations are made
based on the assumption that the propagation of the waves is in 1D direction.
Therefore, only plane waves propagate in the tube. The calculations of the sound
absorption coefficient using the impedance tube method have been established and
described in many publications (Crocker, 2007; Hansen, 2009). The calculations are
quite complex and are based on the transfer function method. To simplify these
calculations, the sound absorption coefficient α is the ratio between intensities of
reflected and incident waves, and can be expressed as:

Ir
α = 1−
Ii
(1)

where Ir and Ii are the intensities of the reflected and incident waves respectively. If
the ratio uses the spectrum of fast Fourier transform (FFT), it can be expressed as:

S bb
α = 1−
S aa
(2)

where Sbb and Saa are the FFT spectrums of the reflected and incident waves
respectively.

The value of α is usually expressed in the range of 0 and 1. A material that absorbs
all incident waves will have α = 1. On the other hand, if α = 0, no energy of sound
is absorbed. Therefore, this material also can be called an insulation material and if it
is backed with a rigid wall, all the incident waves will be fully reflected by the
material (Crocker, 2007).
3. METHODOLOGY

The test apparatus was part of a complete acoustical material testing system from
Scien Co. (Figure 3). In this system, a loudspeaker placed at one end of tube
generates a broadband random signal from 100 Hz to 6.4 kHz. The sample was
placed at the end of the impedance tube in front of the back plate. Two fixed
microphones were located vertically on the tube, with the distances from the
loudspeaker being 150 and 170 mm for microphones 1 and 2 respectively. The
microphones were of the 0.25 in free-field type from SIEN Co., which were used to
measure incident and reflected sound waves in the impedance tube respectively. For
data acquisition and signal processing, an embedded power amplifier, a four-channel
SCIEN Co Vibro-Acoustic ADC 3241 signal platform and a desktop computer
equipped with Acoustic Duct Version 9291-4.3E software were used.

Figure 3: The Scien Co. impedance tube measurement system was used in this study.

The polyurethane foam sample was subjected to macroscopic observation under a

Carl Zeiss Stemi DV4 optical stereo microscope and the image was analysed using
the Axio Vision KS 400 software. For the sound absorption coefficient
measurement, test samples were prepared in two different diameters, 29 and 100 mm
for high and low frequency measurements respectively (Figure 4). The thickness of
samples was fixed at 25 mm. For the measurement of sound absorption coefficient
with air gap thickness, the study was carried for six different air gap thicknesses,
which were 0, 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 mm. Figure 5 shows the setup of air gap
thickness, which is the separation between the back plate and test sample that creates
a cavity.
 Figure 4: The prepared of polyurethane foam test samples with two different
diameters; 29 mm for the small foam on the left and 100 mm for the large foam on the
right.

Figure 5: The separation between the back plate and test sample that creates a cavity
which represents air gap thickness.

4. RESULTS & DISCUSSION

The observation using the optical microscope (Figure 6) shows that the structure of
the polyurethane foam sample is pore cells with honeycomb structure. The pore cells
are interconnected to each other with multiple pore cell sizes. The bright areas in the
image correspond to the pores, whereas the dark areas correspond to the open holes.
Detailed examination of the image shows that the majority of the pores’ diameters
are less than 1 mm.
Figure 6: Image of the porous
orous polyurethane foam captured using an optical microscope.

Figure 7 shows the correlation between sound absorption coefficient and wave
frequency for the different air gap thicknesses.
thickness It can be seen that the properties of
sound absorbing characteristics of polyurethane foam vary significantly with wave
frequency. All the plots show the same trend,trend which is low sound absorption
coefficients at low frequencies, and high
hi sound absorption coefficients at high
frequencies.

1
Sound Absorption

0.9 0
Coefficient

0.8 5
0.7
0.6 10
0.5
15
0.4
0.3 20
0.2
25
0.1
0
1000
1250
1600
2000
2500
3150
4000
5000
6400
100
125
160
200
250
315
400
500
629
800

Frequency (Hz)

Figure 7: Sound absorption coefficients of polyurethane foam with different air gap
thicknesses.
The plot for polyurethane foam without air gap shows the maximum peak value of
sound absorption coefficient of 0.92 at frequency of 3.15 kHz. As the frequency is
increased, the values of absorption decrease. For the case of polyurethane foam with
different of air gap thicknesses, the plots show two different peaks which are
maximum and minimum respectively. The maximum peaks occur at medium
frequencies, while minimum peaks occur at higher frequencies. As compared with
the peak of the plot without an air gap, all the peaks of the plots with air gaps are
shifted towards to lower frequencies with higher thicknesses of air gap showing
lower values. The value of maximum peak of each plot does not show much
difference with most of the peaks being close to 1, with the range of 0.05. This low
range indicates that the sound absorption coefficient is not affected by air gap
thickness. The highest value obtained is 0.97 for air gap thickness of 15 mm. The
minimum peaks for all the plots with air gaps occur at high frequencies, with the
lowest value being 0.78 for air gap thickness of 25 mm. All the plots also show that
the absorption coefficient value drops between frequencies of 2 to 3.15 kHz after
reaching the maximum peak, except for the sample with air gap thickness of 25 mm,
where there is another drop at frequency of 5 kHz.

For the analysis of sound absorption coefficients of the polyurethane foam with and
without air gap, the values obtained indicate that both methods are efficient in
absorbing sound waves at high frequencies, particularly above 250 Hz. However, for
the polyurethane foam with air gaps, all the plots show the improvements of the
sound wave frequencies that are being absorbed. For very low frequencies, below
250 Hz, the results show that sound absorption coefficient with value of zero is
obtained. This indicates that both methods are not able to absorb the incident waves
and fully reflected after hitting the back plate. According to Zhang et al. (2012), low
frequency sounds are very difficult to absorb because of their long wavelength. As a
result, the total of sound waves energy remaining constant. This phenomenon is in
good agreement with the principle of conservation of energy (Giordano, 2010).
Therefore, in any isolated or closed system, the sum of all forms of energy remains
constant. It can be concluded that the polyurethane foam with thickness of 25 mm,
with and without air gaps used in this study are unable to absorb low frequency
sound waves, and hence, is inefficient for low frequencies applications. In order to
improve the reduction of low frequency sounds, the acoustical materials used should
be thicker in order to provide enough time for sound waves to form into heat when
travelling through the obstacles within the acoustical materials (Seddeq, 2009;
Norton et al., 2003).

The mechanism of sound waves dissipated in air medium is due to the Helmoltz
resonance effect (Zhang et al, 2012; Norton et al, 2003; Crocker, 2007). The peaks
of resonance frequencies can be clearly seen in the Figure 7, which correspond to the
maximum sound absorption coefficient at these frequencies. However, the sound
absorption coefficient at certain frequencies is reduced after reaching the maximum
peak. This phenomenon occurs due to sound waves propagation within the air
medium, where the excitation and degradation of sound energy depend on the
thickness of air gaps (Ayub et al., 2009; Zhang & Tianning, 2009; Fouladi et al.,
2010). Even though the sound absorption coefficient is reduced, the values obtained
are still high, with most of them above than 0.8.

5. CONCLUSION

Microscopic observation showed that the polyurethane foam acoustical material used
in this study is porous with honeycomb structure. The results of the analysis showed
that the majority of diameters of the pores are less than 1 mm. The sound absorption
coefficient of polyurethane foam with six different air gap thicknesses of 0, 5, 10,
15, 20, and 25 mm were studied and validated through experimental measurements
in an impedance tube measurement system. Sound absorption coefficient for both
with and without air gaps significantly increased with increase of sound wave
frequencies, until the maximum peak was obtained. All the maximum peaks of the
plotted of air gap thicknesses shifted with the lowest frequency obtained for larger
air gaps. The results also showed that the air gaps reduced the sound absorption
capability at high frequencies of sound waves. Both methods, with and without air
gap, were not able to absorb the low frequencies of sound waves, particularly below
than 250 Hz. The implementation of combination polyurethane foam with air gaps
was able to enhance the sound absorption coefficient in the medium frequency range
without changing the thickness of acoustical materials.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study was conducted as part of the Tenth Malaysian Plan (RMK10) project
entitled A Study of Vibroacoustic Properties of Composite Materials. The authors
would like to thank the Science and Technology Research Institute for Defence
(STRIDE) for providing research facilities and technical assistance.

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