Acoustic TODAY

VOLUME 3, ISSUE 2
APRIL 2007
Acoustics
Today
Structural Acoustics, Part 2
Undergraduate Acoustics Students
Meuccis Speaking Telegraph
and more
A publication of
the Acoustical Society
of America
Penn States Applied Research Laboratory

Flowthrough, Low-Turbulence Anechoic Chamber
Because you never know

who will be moving in.
New! Level-Right WearTop, for the
popular concrete-floor look.
Acousti-Mat II is the low-profile system that actually isolates

sound waves, reducing transmission of impact and airborne sound up
to 50 percent over wood frame, and up to 75 percent over concrete.
Acousti-Mat 3 is the answer for impossible sound control
challenges, such as open beam construction.
A poured Maxxon Underlayment covers either system option, increasing IIC and STC up to 17 rating points for wood frame, and up to 25
IIC for concrete construction.
Also available Enkasonic, the original sound control mat.

Open Beam Construction
Renovation
Hard Surface Floor Goods Areas
New Construction
Concrete Construction
Security Warehouse Lofts, Minneapolis
For more information or a FREE GUIDE to acoustical construction:

call 800-356-7887, visit www.Maxxon.com/am
or e-mail info@Maxxon.com
NEW!
N
MAXXO
FROM
Our low-profile sound control solution for

concrete achieves a Delta IIC Rating of 19.
The Metropolitan Condominiums, San Diego
Proven on over 60 million square feet.
Acousti-Mat is a registered trademark of Maxxon Corporation, Hamel, MN. 2004 Maxxon Corporation, all rights reserved. Enkasonic is a trademark of Colbond, Inc., Enka, NC, USA
EDITOR
Dick Stern (AcousticsToday@aip.org)
ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY
OF AMERICA
CONTRIBUTORS
Whitlow W. L. Au, Ilene J. Busch-Vishniac,

Angelo J. Campanella, Bruce E. Douglas,
John B. Fanhline, Stephen A. Hambric,
Uwe J. Hansen, Thomas J. Matula,
Walter G. Mayer, Elaine Moran,
Dick Stern, James E. West
EDITORIAL BOARD
Dick Stern, Chair; Elliott H. Berger;

Ilene J. Busch-Vishniac; Carol Y. Espy-Wilson;
K. Anthony Hoover; James F. Lynch;
Allan D. Pierce; Thomas D. Rossing;
Brigitte Schulte-Fortkamp
The Acoustical Society of America was founded in 1929 to

increase and diffuse the knowledge of acoustics and to promote its practical application. Any person or corporation
interested in acoustics is eligible for membership in the
Society. Further information concerning membership, as
well as application forms, may be obtained by addressing
Elaine Moran, ASA Office Manager, Acoustical Society of
America, Suite 1NO1, 2 Huntington Quadrangle, Melville,
NY 11747-4502, Telephone (516) 576-2360; Fax: 516-5762377; E-mail: asa@aip.org; Web: http://asa.aip.org
ADDRESS
Acoustical Society of America

Suite 1NO1
2 Huntington Quadrangle
Melville, NY 11747-4502
ASA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Charles E. Schmid
ASA EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Allan D. Pierce
EDITORIAL PRODUCTION
Maya FlikopDirector, Special Publications

and Proceedings, AIP
ADVERTISING
FUTURE ARTICLES
Swing Rhythm
Illuminating Sound
International Commission for Acoustics
Robert Finnegan, Manager-Exhibits, AIP
Archeological Acoustics
Fogg Art Museum
Impact Factor
Speech and Hearing Special Issue
ACOUSTICS TODAY (ISSN 1557-0215, coden ATCODK) April 2007, volume 3, issue 2 is published quarterly by the Acoustical Society of America, Suite 1NO1, 2
Huntington Quadrangle, Melville, NY 11747-4502. Periodicals Postage rates are paid at Huntington Station, NY, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send
address changes to Acoustics Today, Acoustical Society of America, Suite 1NO1, 2 Huntington Quadrangle, Melville, NY 11747-4502. Copyright 2007, Acoustical
Society of America. All rights reserved. Single copies of individual articles may be made for private use or research. Authorization is given to copy articles beyond
the use permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law. To reproduce content from this publication, please obtain permission from Copyright Clearance
Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA via their website: www.copyright.com/, or contact them at (978)-750-8400. Persons desiring to photocopy materials for classroom use should contact the CCC Academic Permissions Service. Authorization does not extend to systematic or multiple reproduction, to
copying for promotional purposes, to electronic storage or distribution, or to republication in any form. In all such cases, specific written permission from the
American Institute of Physics must be obtained. Permission is granted to quote from Acoustics Today with the customary acknowledgment of the source. To reprint
a figure, table, or other excerpt requires the consent of one of the authors and notification to AIP. Address requests to AIP Office of Rights and Permissions, Suite
1NO1, 2 Huntington Quadrangle, Melville NY 11747-4502; Fax (516) 576-2450; Telephone (516) 576-2268; E-mail: rights@aip.org
Acoustics Today, April 2007
ACO Pacific, Inc.

2604 Read Ave. Belmont, CA 94002 U.S.A.
Tel:650-595-8588 FAX:650-591-2891
e-mail: acopac@acopacific.com
For over 25 years ACO Pacific, Inc. has served the needs of
End-users and Equipment Manufacturers. Headquartered in
the San Francisco Bay Area, ACO Pacific has manufacturing
facilities and suppliers in California and internationally.
Our OEM relationships include Agilent/HP, Audio Precision,
SPS, DRA Labs and many other instrumentation and process
control manufacturers, large and small . Our End-user
customers include: manufacturers of loudspeakers;
computers and peripherals; heavy equipment; automobiles
and automotive parts - tires, brakes, engines; universities;
aerospace; and an alphabet soup of government agencies
US and foreign.
Microphone Preamplifiers
Microphone Power Supplies
SPL Calibrators
Simple Intensity Sound Intensity
The Alternative
Type 1 and Type 1.5
Measurement Microphones
1, 1/2 and 1/4 Inch Models
Stainless and
Titanium Diaphragms
Quartz Insulators
Response to 120 kHz
Noise Floors below 5 dBA
Meet or Exceed IEC and ANSI
Model 3024A
Very Random Noise
Generator
Pink and White Noise, 1kHz Sine
Outputs
1.6 Hz to 39 kHz (-3dB)
Portable - Battery and AC Power
ACOustical Interface
.
PS9200KIT
Microphone Power Supplies

2 and 4 Channels - Gain Available
XLR and Lemo Connectors
Includes: PS9200 (XLR) Power Supply

AC Adaptor
4012 Preamplifier w/CA4012-5 Cable
Selection of 1/2 Inch Type 1 Microphone
WS1 - 3 inch Windscreen
SC1 Die Cut Storage Case (SC2
optional)
Options:511E Calibrator,G Gain Stage
ACOustics Begins With ACO
Acoustics Today
A Publication of the Acoustical Society of America
Volume 3, Issue 2
April 2007
Cover: To meet the need for quieter and more efficient air-moving and hydraulic machinery, the
Applied Research Laboratory built an air-breathing flow-through anechoic chamber. Its design was
based on specifications set by acousticians and hydrodynamicists at the Lab, and on experience and
recommendations of managers of nine other large-volume chambers.
The Vice Presidents ViewWhitlow W. L. Au
Articles:
9 Structural Acoustics TutorialPart 2:
SoundStructure Interaction
Stephen A. Hambric and John B. Fahnline
Learn more about how vibrating structures interact with
air and water. This tutorial uses simulations and measurements to explain the interaction of structural vibrations and acoustic sound fields
28 Acoustics Courses at the Undergraduate Level:
How Can We Attract More Students?
Ilene J. Busch-Vishniac and James E. West
It might be possible to impact the flow of students into
acoustics fields being more thoughtful and proactive about
acoustics elective courses at the undergraduate level.
37 Antonio Meucci, The Speaking Telegraph, and The
First TelephoneAngelo J. Campanella
In 1898, Italian telecommunications engineer Basilia
Catania noticed a newspaper article about Antonio
Meucci that claimed that he invented a Sound
Telegraph before Alexander Graham Bell.
Departments:
46 Committee on Education in Acoustics: Science
Education and the Acoustical Society of AmericaAre
We Doing Enough?Uwe J. Hansen
48 Physical Acoustics: The Physical Acoustics Summer

School (PASS)Thomas J. Matula
50 Standards News: A New Title and Scope for ISO/TC
108Bruce E. Douglas
The ISO Technical Management Board recently approved
a change to the title and scope of ISO/TC 108, reflecting
the changing shape of the TC in the 21st century. This
article by the Chairman of TC 108 reviews the current status of the committee and looks to the future.
53 National NewsElaine Moran
Acoustical news from around the country.
58 International NewsWalter G. Mayer
Acoustical news from around the world.
61 The LibraryDick Stern
New and recent publications, reports, and brochures on
acoustics.
62 The LabDick Stern
New and recent acoustic instrumentation and news
about acoustic instrument manufacturers.
63 PassingsDick Stern
Business Directory
65 Business card advertisements
66 Classified
Classified advertisements, including positions offered
and positions desired
68 Index to Advertisers
Table of Contents
THE VICE PRESIDENTS VIEW

Whitlow W. L. Au
Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, University of Hawaii
Kailua, Hawaii 96734
had the unique experience of serving as the

ASA chair of the 4th joint meeting of the
Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and the
Acoustical Society of Japan (ASJ) in Honolulu
and at the same time, as the Vice President of
the ASA. Holding these two positions simultaneously provided me with an unusual vantage
point from which to serve members of the ASA
as well as to observe the detailed workings of an
ASA meeting. My experiences were both
rewarding and gratifying and left me with a very
positive impression of our society and its members. I also was able to witness the mutual cooperation between the ASA and the ASJ and am
very appreciative of our fine relationship. The
Honolulu meeting was a great success thanks to
the local organizing committee members, the
ASA headquarters staff, the good working relationship
between the ASA and ASJ, and the cooperative nature of our
membership. Approximately 1,770 people registered for the
meeting, making it the second largest ASA meeting, the largest
being the joint meeting of the ASA and the European
Acoustics Association in Berlin in1999.
I am continually impressed with the commitment and
dedication of our members, realizing that the ASA functions
mainly as a volunteer organization with a handful of
extremely qualified and equally dedicated professionals who
are responsible for the day-to-day operation of our Society.
The members of the local organizing committee for the
Honolulu meeting, as with all our other meetings, showed a
high level of commitment and dedication with a lets roll up
our sleeves and get to work attitude. It took many meetings
to plan and organize a large meeting and many hours interacting with hotel personnel and other service providers.
Committee members gave their time freely, squeezing in
meeting responsibilities between their work responsibilities
without begrudging this intrusion into their normal schedule. At the conference, they were often seen hustling around
fixing unpredictable problems and issues that always pop up
at meetings. Doing the best possible job seemed to be the
unstated motto of the committee members. I am extremely
grateful to the members of our local organizing committee.
Our student council is maturing well and the two main
student activities at meetings, the student icebreaker and student reception, have also been proceeding well. It is a joy to
see our student members interacting and networking with
each other, engaging the more senior members, and integrating into our Society. The Executive Council has placed a high
premium on establishing a student-friendly environment at
our meetings and I see this investment paying off as the new
generation becomes more involved in our Society. The
future of the ASA is in good hands as these young colleagues
continue to come on line and begin to participate in the
functioning of ASA which includes not only presenting
papers but participating in technical committee meetings
and other organizational functions.
It is heartening to see that the number of

named prizes and awards in different technical
areas continues to grow with the addition of
two more prizes since 2000. These prizes are
but a small reflection of how senior members
of the ASA cherish the role of the ASA in their
careers and are willing to play an on-going role
in the growth of the society.
One of the major roles of the Vice
President is to lead the Technical Council,
consisting of the chairpersons of the 13 technical committees. The Technical Council plays
the leading role in establishing the technical
content of our twice yearly meetings, taking
the responsibility for arranging special sessions, appointing session chairs, and being
aware of new developments within their technical areas. Members of the Technical Council are also the
ones who are in closest contact and relationship with our
members through their technical committees. Members of
the Technical Council are also responsible for promoting
growth within their specialty areas by wise use of technical
initiative funds, allocating special travel grants for invited
speakers and participating in the organization of special symposiums, workshops and innovative ways to promote
acoustics and the ASA.
Promotion of acoustics and the role of the ASA in this
special field of science is actually the responsibility of all the
members. I recently participated in a survey conducted by
the National Research Council (NRC) of the National
Academies to obtain an assessment of research doctorate
programs in our universities. The areas of science were divided into different categories and sub-categories. Much to my
surprise, acoustics was not listed under physics, not under
engineering, not under biology and not under psychology. In
fact, acoustics was not mentioned in any sub-categories. Are
we so specialized that no sub-categories would be appropriate or are we merely taken for granted? Much of the work that
we do affects our quality of life yet the public and important
decision makers are unaware that acoustics is a bona fide
field of science that is responsible for a variety of advancements in technology. There are so many examples in our
everyday lives in which the fundamentals of acoustics have
been applied to make our lives better and more enjoyable. It
is easy to take for granted the quietness of a well-made automobile, a modern train or subway, or a good concert hall. We
all have examples in our own technical areas. My point is that
we all need to promote the field of acoustics as a valuable scientific discipline which cuts across so many technical areas
and affects so many aspects of our ordinary life.
In closing, I would like to say that I am extremely happy
to be a member of the ASA and very glad to be able to serve
you, our members. Our society is doing well because of many
good things that have been on-going for many years, and
mostly because of the dedication of our membership. It is a
pleasure to be associated with such fine colleagues.
The Vice Presidents View

37 &,
4 819(
4'
1(:
1%'
'";"'<%
' &5
=&& 55

!!"
# #" $ # #"
%&'(
)*&
%

+,-(* &$(
.#./01. 10+2.30.4
('&+,( 45.($
6!#
%&'&(()&%%(
STRUCTURAL ACOUSTICS TUTORIALPART 2:

SOUNDSTRUCTURE INTERACTION
Stephen A. Hambric
and
John B. Fahnline
Applied Research Laboratory, The Pennsylvania State University
State College, Pennsylvania 16804
al surface must be identical to the corresponding particle
Introduction
velocity in the neighboring fluid. This simple equality allows
his is the second of a two-part tutorial on structural
us to couple the equations that define structural and fluid
acoustics written for Acoustics Today. The first
motion at the fluidstructure interface and solve for the total
appeared in the October 2006 issue, and focused on
soundstructure behavior. While the normal particle velocity
vibrations in structures. In that article, I explained
is identical in the structure and fluid, the in-plane, or tangent
the various waves that can propagate through structures,
particle velocity is not. In fact, we allow a slip condition
and how bending waves are dispersive (their wavespeeds
between the structure and fluid, so that a structure can slide
increase with frequency);
along a neighboring fluid without inducing any sound.
the modes of vibration of finite structures;
Of course, with any simple concept there are inevitably
mobility and impedance, and how they are simply sumseveral assumptions. Here are ours:
mations of individual modal responses;
homogeneity (the fluid properties are the same every structural damping;
where),
how the mobility of an infinite structure is the mean
isotropy (the fluid properties are

mobility of a finite one; and
the same no matter what direction the
modeling vibrations with finite eleIn this article we will
wave propagates), and
ment (FE) analysis.
linearity (the fluid properties do

Some of the feedback I received
explain: what structural
not depend on the fluctuating pressure
from readers of the first article pointed
or phase).
out that it was more of a cliffs notes
vibrations do to neighboring amplitude
With these simplifying assumptions, it
summary of structural acoustics than a
is straightforward to couple the vibratutorial, but found the summary quite
acoustic fluids, and what
tions of structures with those in
useful nevertheless. After thinking about
acoustic fluids. Incidentally, all of the
it, I suppose that is true, and I thought
sound fields do to
information in Part 1 of this article
about renaming the second part of this
made the same assumptions, but for the
article
A
Structural
Acoustics
neighboring structures.
structural materials!
Cookbook, rather than a tutorial. For
We will start by explaining what a
continuity, though, I have retained the
structures vibrations do to a fluidthey compress and
original title, but hope the two articles will be a useful short
expand it. The spatial pattern of structural vibrations and
reference on the subject, where handy formulas and concepts
their frequencies determines how much sound is radiated,
can be easily found.
and in what directions. It may be helpful to think of the
In this article, I have added a co-authorDr. John
acoustic fluid as an elastic blob surrounding the structure,
Fahnlinewho specializes in analyzing soundstructure
being pushed and pulled over time by the motion of the
interaction using boundary element (BE) modeling techstructural boundary (in the normal direction only, of
niques. John has already written one book1 on acoustic BE
course). When the fluids mass density is comparable to the
analysis (with Gary Koopmann), and is working on a second.
structures, the fluid not only absorbs sound, but also massIn this article we will explain:
loads the structure. We will explain how two important
what structural vibrations do to neighboring acoustic flustructuresa circular baffled piston, and a flat rectangular
ids, and
flexible finite plateradiate sound and are fluid-loaded by
what sound fields do to neighboring structures.
the impedance of the surrounding acoustic fluid.
These problems are complementary (and reciprocal), and we
Next, we will consider the complementary problem
will use analytic, numerical, and experimental data to
how acoustic waves induce vibration in a structure. The same
demonstrate their basic concepts. As with Part 1 of the artiphysics are at work in this reciprocal problem, as we shall see
cle, we will supply plenty of useful terms and equations.
later. We will conclude by discussing how to make measureThe overarching concept of linear soundstructure interments of soundstructure interaction, and how to model it
action is simple: the normal particle velocity in the structure
using boundary elements.
and fluid along the fluidstructure interaction boundary must
A clarifying note: in this article we consider
be the same. This means that when a structure vibrates against
soundstructure interaction, not fluidstructure interaction
a fluid, the component of the vibration normal to the structur-
Structural Acoustics Tutorial 2
(FSI). FSI usually refers to how moving fluids interact with

solid objects, such as the turbulent flow over a structure. To
learn more about FSI, we recommend the references by
Blevins2 and Naudascher and Rockwell.3
Piston vibrating against an acoustic fluid

Perhaps no other structural-acoustic system has been
studied more than a circular baffled piston vibrating against an
acoustic fluid (see, for example, Fahy,4 pages 5860 and
118121; Pierce,5 pages 220225; and Junger and Feit,6 pages
95100 and 105109). We will describe how a piston interacts
with a surrounding acoustic fluid, and how the acoustic fluid
affects the pistons vibrations. This simple problem allows us to
introduce many structural-acoustic quantities of interest.
Let us start by considering a very slowly oscillating piston in a rigid baffle, as shown in Fig. 1. As the piston moves
outward, fluid flows from the area of high pressure near the
center of the piston to its outer edge, which is nearly at ambient pressure. Conversely, as the piston moves inward, fluid
flows toward the center of the piston, where the pressure is
less than the ambient pressure. The level of sound radiation
is a function of frequency because as the speed of the oscillation of the piston increases, there is less and less time for the
pressure to equalize, and eventually the surface vibrations
become much more efficient in compressing the adjacent
fluid and causing sound radiation. Since the pistons size controls how far the pressure pulses have to travel before they
can equalize with the surrounding fluid, it is important in
determining when it begins to radiate sound efficiently.
Thus, we can conclude purely from physical arguments
that the main parameters which control the acoustic radiation
from a vibrating structure are its speed of vibration (or frequency) and its size. It is common in acoustics to nondimensionalize the problem in terms of the quantity ka, where k is the
acoustic wavenumber and a is the characteristic dimension of
the vibrating structure. For a piston source, the transition from
an inefficient, low frequency oscillation to an efficient, high frequency oscillation occurs at approximately ka = 1, where a is
the radius of the piston. At this frequency, the acoustic wavelength is of the same order as the size of the structure.
A source with zero average displacement is an even more
inefficient radiator of sound at low frequencies, like an
unbaffled piston, i.e., a loudspeaker without a cabinet. When
the diaphragm of the speaker moves, the fluid on one side of
the speaker is compressed while the fluid on the other side is
expanded (see Fig. 1). There is a natural flow of fluid from
high pressure to low pressure, and thus the fluid flows around
the edges of the speaker. The pressure equalization is very
nearly complete because the average displacement of the surface is zero when both sides are taken into account, such that
there is very little residual compression of the acoustic medium and sound radiation. As the frequency of vibration
increases, the sound radiation also increases because there is
not as much time for the fluid to flow around the edges of the
speaker before it is compressed. At approximately ka = 1, a
source with zero average displacement becomes as efficient a
radiator of sound as a baffled piston.
Let us consider the pressure field radiated by an oscillating piston at discrete frequencies. We assume the pistons
10
Fig. 1. Low frequency vibration and acoustic fluid motion of a piston. Left baffled piston; Right unbaffled piston.
vibrations are time harmonic (eiwt), and consider pressures in

the far-field, or far away from the structure. The far-field
pressure radiated by a baffled circular piston as a function of
angle and distance r is:
,
( 1)
where 0 is the fluid density, a is the piston radius, v is the

piston velocity (assumed to be constant over the surface of
the piston), and k is the radial frequency divided by the
acoustic sound speed c. We do not include the time-harmonic dependence in this, or in any future equations.
Figure 2 shows the far-field pressure at two frequencies,
normalized to ka, where ka= and 3. For ka= (a full
acoustic wavelength spanning the piston diameter), the pressure is in phase at all directivity angles (note that the directivity angle is taken from a vector pointing normal to the pis-
Fig. 2. Pressure distribution in the far-field of a radiating baffled piston. Top

ka=; Bottom ka=3.
ton surface). However, at higher frequencies, like koa=3, the

pressure alternates its phase at varying angles. The directivity of the sound radiated by piston sources is usually plotted
as a pressure magnitude to remove the effects of alternating
phase.
It is hard to generalize how much sound a source makes
by considering pressure at a specific location. Therefore, we
usually measure or compute the total radiated sound power
instead. The total radiated sound power is computed by integrating the active acoustic intensity over space.
The active, or propagating acoustic intensity in a fluctuating acoustic pressure field is:
(2)
Fig. 3. Sound intensity distribution in the far-field of a radiating baffled piston,

ka=3.
where v* is the conjugate of the acoustic fluctuating particle

velocity. Notice that both the particle velocity and intensity
are vector quantities, and point in specific directions. When
in the far-field, we consider only the radially propagating
component of intensity. Also when in the far-field, the pressure and particle velocity are in phase with each other (this is
not the case close to the vibrating surface, or in the nearfield) and v=p/c. So, in the far-field, the radial component
of intensity simplifies to:
Figure 3 shows the far-field intensity for ka=3 on a dB

scale. Notice how all the peak locations are positive, since
intensity squares the pressure magnitude. The highest pressure
is normal to the piston, with lower amplitude side lobes at various angles. As ka increases, more side lobes will appear.
The total radiated power is computed by integrating the
intensity (which is just the localized power/area) over a farfield half-spherical surface surrounding the piston. Spherical
surfaces are used to make the integration simple; the total
sound power may be integrated over any shaped surface,
though.
The radiated sound power is related directly to the radiation resistance of the fluid, which acts over the surface of the
(3)
ACOUSTIC MEASUREMENT PRODUCTS
Reliable Acoustic
Measurement Products
I
Prepolarized ICP and Externally Polarized (200 V)
Type 1 Condenser and Cost-effective Array Microphones
Linear Measurements to 192 dB
Low-profile Surface Microphones
Sizes from 1/8 to 1 Diameter
Full Complement of Low-Noise Preamplifiers
Your Front-End Solution for Sensors, Power Supplies,

Cables, Calibration, and Accessories
Toll Free in USA 888-684-0013 24-hour SensorLineSM 716-684-0001

E-mail acoustics@pcb.com www.pcb.com
ISO 9001:2000 Certified A2LA Accredited to ISO 17025 AS9100:2004 Certified
2007 PCB Group, Inc. ICP and PCB are registered trademarks of PCB Group, Inc.
A Complete Line of Microphones, Preamplifiers and Accessories
11
piston. In fact, power can be calculated knowing a structures

radiation resistance and spatially- and time-averaged normal
velocity:
.
Popular approximations for the low-frequency resistance and

reactance are:
(4)
The radiation resistance and reactance are the real and

imaginary parts of the fluid loading on the structures surface.
Imagine once again the fluid as an encompassing elastic blob
surrounding the structure. As the structure pushes against
this blob, it encounters an impedance, which resists the
structures motion. The impedance, Z, is complex, and equal
to R + iX, where X is the reactance. The resistance and
reactance are fluid-loading properties of the structure, and do
not depend on how the structure vibrates. Equations for the
resistance and reactance (shown without derivation) of a baffled circular piston are:
, and
.
(5)
(6)
Note once again that no piston structural properties appear in

the above equations; they are solely determined by the geometry of the piston and the acoustic properties of the fluid.
We plot the resistance and reactance for a 16.6 mm
radius piston in water at the top of Fig. 4. At low frequencies,
the resistance (in red) looks like a parabola, while the reactance (in green) looks like a line with a constant slope.
(7)
At high frequencies, the resistance asymptotes to a constant value, while the reactance decreases inversely proportionally to frequency:
.
(8)
Now, notice how R and X in the example are plotted in

absolute terms, but also plotted normalized against cA (see
the axis on right side of the plot) and against dimensionless
frequency ka (see the axis on the bottom of the plot). Recall
that you can use ka to visualize how many acoustic wavelengths fit over the characteristic dimension a. In our plot, the
maximum ka is , which corresponds to a half wavelength over
the piston radius, or a full wavelength across the piston diameter. Ro /cA converges to a value of 1 at high frequencies. In
fact, Ro /cA is called the normalized radiation resistance, or
more commonly, the radiation efficiency:
.
(9)
We will learn more about radiation efficiency when we discuss how sound is radiated by plate modes.
At the bottom of Fig. 4, examples of how the fluid loading varies over the surface of a piston are shown at low, mid,
and high frequencies. Below a ka of /2, the fluid loading is
primarily reactive, or mass-like, weighing down the piston.
Above ka of /2, the fluid loading becomes more resistive,
absorbing energy in the form of sound from the vibrating
structure.
Now, let us suppose that the piston is the mass element of
a simple harmonic oscillator, where the mass (m) rests on a
grounded spring (k) and dashpot (b). We now consider the
effect of the complex fluid loading on the piston resonance,
where the piston mobility in-vacuo is:
.
(10)
The fluid loading (resistance R and reactance X) may be

added to the mobility equation to produce:
(11)
Fig. 4. Radiation impedance of baffled circular piston. Topresistance and reactance as a function of frequency (and ka); Bottomspatial variability of resistance
and reactance at three discrete frequencies.
12
For a 1 gram piston of 16.6 mm radius, with spring constant k=1x105 N/m, and a damping constant b of 1, we compute the drive point mobility v/F in air (ignoring fluid load-
The radiated sound power curve in water illustrates the

basic principle of loudspeaker design: adjust the piston properties to set the fundamental resonance as low in frequency as
possible, so that the piston response is controlled by the mass
term in Eq. 11. Recall that the radiated sound power is the
product of the radiation resistance R and the square of the piston normal velocity. Since R at low ka is proportional to (ka)2,
and the piston mobility above resonance is proportional to
1/2, the frequency dependencies cancel, leaving a nearly frequency independent radiated sound power/F2 response.
In our example in Fig. 5, the in-air radiated sound power
transfer function is not flat above the piston resonance frequency because the radiation resistance is above the frequency range where it is proportional to (ka)2. To resolve this, a
speaker designer would simply reduce the radius of the piston, shifting the radiation resistance curve further out in frequency. This solution comes with a cost thoughthe radiation resistance amplitude reduces with surface area, which
will in turn reduce the radiated sound power.
Fig. 5. Mobility magnitudes (top), radiation resistances (middle), and radiated

sound power transfer functions (bottom) of a 16.6 mm radius circular baffled piston in air (black) and in water (blue).
ing, using Eq. 10), and in water (including fluid loading using
Eq. 11). Next, we multiply R by the square of mobility to compute radiated sound power. Plots of the mobility magnitude,
radiation resistance (in air and in water), and the radiated
sound power for a unit force input are shown in Fig. 5.
The effect of mass loading on the piston in water is pronounced, shifting the piston resonance frequency downward,
and the overall mobility amplitude downward. The radiation
resistance (and reactance) of water is much higher than that
of air (be sure to note the multiple scales used on the resistance comparison plot). Therefore, radiated sound power is
quite different in air and in water, and the piston resonance
peaks occur at different frequencies.
Structural waves vibrating against an acoustic fluid

How well do structural waves (rather than rigid oscillators) radiate sound? Since only structural motion normal to
an objects surface induces an equal motion in a neighboring
fluid, we consider transversely vibrating, or flexural waves
(we acknowledge, however, that longitudinal waves deform a
structure transversely due to an elastic materials Poisson
effect, but do not focus on the sound radiated by longitudinal
waves here).
How well flexural waves in a structure radiate sound
depends on whether the waves, which essentially act as a
source against the fluid, are subsonic (slower than the
wavespeed in the fluid) or supersonic (faster than the
wavespeed in the fluid). Supersonic waves radiate sound, and
subsonic waves do not.
Many structural acousticians like to consider the sound
radiated by structural waves in wavenumber space, and
examine wavetypes on frequency-wavenumber plots.
Consider the traveling flexural waves in an infinite plate
shown in Fig. 6. The flexural and acoustic wavenumbers
(computed by dividing radial frequency by the flexural and
acoustic wavespeeds) are plotted against frequency in the top
of the figure. Since the acoustic waves are non-dispersive, the
wavenumber curve has constant slope. The flexural waves,
however, are dispersive, causing a varying slope in the
wavenumber curve.
At low frequencies, the structural wavenumbers are
higher than those in the acoustic fluid, corresponding to subsonic structural waves. These flexural waves radiate no sound
at all (this is only true for infinite plateswe will discuss the
sound radiated by finite plates soon). This is because the particle velocity in the fluid normal to the structures surface
must match that of the structure. At low frequencies, acoustic
waves are faster than structural ones, so their wavelengths are
longer. This means the structure simply cannot induce a
propagating wave in the fluid.
The frequency at which the flexural and acoustic waves
have the same wavenumber (and wavespeed, and wavelength) is called the coincidence frequency, and the flexural
13
Fig. 6. Bending and acoustic wavenumber-frequency plot, with trace diagrams of

bending and acoustic waves at and above coincidence. Below coincidence, an infinite bending wave radiates no sound!
waves now radiate sound, as shown in the image in the middle

of Fig. 6. They do so in the plane of the plate, or grazing the
plate. At frequencies above coincidence, the flexural waves
continue to speed upeventually becoming pure shear waves
at very high frequencies (see Part 1 of this article). At these
high frequencies, the sound radiated by the flexural waves
propagates in a preferred direction, which is computed by
trace matching the flexural wave to the shorter acoustic wave,
as shown in the image on the bottom right of Fig. 6.
The angle of dominant radiation (taken from a vector
normal to the structures surface) is computed as:
,
moduli (Youngs Modulus E and Shear Modulus G) speeds up

flexural waves, and lowers the plates coincidence frequency.
Increasing a plates density increases its mass, slowing down
flexural waves, and raises the plates coincidence frequency.
Increasing thickness increases both stiffness and mass, but
increases the stiffness at a greater rate, so thickening a plate
will lower its coincidence frequency.
Therefore, stiffening a plate lowers its coincidence frequency, allowing it to radiate sound at lower frequencies.
Conversely, mass-loading a plate raises its coincidence frequency, so that the plate does not radiate sound at low frequencies. It would seem that the answer to most noise control problems would be to simply add mass to a plate while
reducing its stiffness! While this is a good way of reducing
sound radiation, we have never had any of our sponsors
accept it. As most of us have experienced, nearly all new
structures are lightweight and stiff, like carbon-fiber composites reinforced with ribbing. These sorts of structures typically have low coincidence frequencies, and therefore radiate
sound very well. Also, as we will see later, lightweight stiff
structures are very easy to excite by sound waves.
Since most practical structures are finite, we will now
explain how well the mode shapes of a structure radiate (see
Part 1 of this article for a discussion of structural resonances).
The classic example studied by early structural acousticians is
our old friendthe simply supported rectangular plate.
Before we proceed with modal sound radiation, remember a key concept: the standing waves in a mode shape are
comprised of multiple left and right (and forward and back)
traveling waves, which propagate at the structures wave
speed. It is these traveling waves that radiate, or do not radiate sound. If our plate were infinite, such that there were no
reflections from any of the plate boundaries, subsonic flexural waves would radiate no sound. However, the discontinuities at the boundaries scatter the energy in subsonic flexural waves into many wavenumbers, some of them supersonic,
so that a finite plate radiates sound below its coincidence frequency. The amount of sound radiation depends on the radiation efficiency of each of the plates modes.
Maidanik7 and Wallace8 computed how much sound a
finite rectangular simply supported plates modes radiate. In
particular, Wallace provides formulas for the frequencydependent far-field pressure and acoustic intensity fields radi-
(12)
where c is the flexural wavespeed. You can compute a plates

coincidence frequency by setting the flexural and acoustic
wavespeeds (or wavenumbers) equal to each other. For bending waves in thin plates at coincidence:
, so
(13)
(14)
How does coincidence frequency vary with plate parameters?

To find out, let us examine Fig. 7. Increasing a plates elastic
14
Fig. 7. Effects of stiffening and mass-loading on plate coincidence frequencies.

Stiffening a plate reduces the coincidence frequency, and adding mass increases it.
ated by a given plate mode, along with an integral for computing the sound power radiation efficiency for each mode. We
show the far-field intensity below, near, and above the plate
coincidence frequency for the first three low-order modes of a
square 1m x 1m plate in Fig. 8. Recall from the first article that
we define mode orders as (m, n) pairs, where m and n correspond to the number of antinodes (regions of maximum deformation) in the plates x and y directions, respectively.
In the figure, the mode shapes of the plate are shown,
along with the corresponding far-field intensity patterns. At
low frequencies, the fundamental (1,1) mode radiates sound
omnidirectionally, like a baffled circular piston. Also at low
frequencies, the (1,2) mode radiates sound like a dipole, and
the (2,2) mode radiates like a quadrupole.
The figure also shows radiation efficiencies as a function
of acoustic wavenumber (frequency/acoustic wavespeed),
with a line shown to indicate the frequencies of the directivity plots. Notice how they resemble the normalized radiation
resistance of the baffled circular piston (Fig. 4). Below coincidence, the efficiencies increase rapidly with increasing frequency. The efficiencies peak at coincidence (exceeding 1,
showing that they are not true efficiencies!), and then asymptote to a value of one above coincidence.
Above coincidence, the far-field sound directivity
changes, with lobes of sound radiated from the structure at
critical angles. These critical angles may be computed using
the trace matching procedure described above for the infinite
plate. The critical angles exist for all plate modes except the
fundamental (1,1) mode, which radiates sound normal to the
plate at all frequencies, but with a spatial beamwidth that
narrows with increasing frequency.
Let us re-examine the radiation efficiencies below coincidence for the different mode orders. We see that the (1,1)
mode radiates sound most efficiently, followed by the (1,2)
mode, and then the (2,2) mode, which radiates sound least
efficiently. This trend shows an important result: modes with
odd m and n orders radiate sound much better than those
with mixed orders (odd-even or even-odd), which radiate
better than those with purely even orders (even-even).
Using the analytical radiation efficiencies, we can compute how much sound a rectangular plate radiates when driven by a point force. To do so, we combine the mobility formula from Part 1 of this article with radiation efficiencies
computed using the formulas in Wallace.8 Ignoring any fluid
loading effects on the structure (which we know will massload and radiation damp the structure from our exercises
with the baffled circular piston), we show the mobility, radiation efficiency, and radiated sound power for a unit force
drive in Fig. 9.
Starting with the mobility (top of the figure), we see how
the contributions from the individual modes compare to the
total mobility. The mobility is dominated by resonant
response at the resonance frequencies, and a mix of non-resonant responses away from resonance.
Next, examining the radiation efficiencies of the modes
shows the same trends we observed in Fig. 8that odd-odd
modes radiate sound very well, but modes with mixed and
even orders radiate sound poorly. The fundamental (1,1)
mode radiates sound very much like a baffled piston, and the
Fig. 8. Far-field sound intensity in air for various low-order simply supported 1 m
square flat plate modes. Topbelow coincidence, Middlenear coincidence,
Bottomabove coincidence.
radiated sound power transfer function (power normalized

by the square of the input force) is dominated by the sound
radiated by that mode. Peaks in the sound power occur for
the other modes, primarily the other odd-odd (1,3) mode,
but the non-resonant sound radiated by the (1,1) mode is
nearly flat with increasing frequency.
This example brings up one of the key points of this artiStructural Acoustics Tutorial 2
15
clenon-resonant sound radiation can be higher than resonant

sound radiation. The sound radiated by the (2,2) mode at its resonance frequency just below 100 Hz is a good exampleit is
lower than the non-resonant sound radiated by the (1,1) mode!
When we coupled the radiation resistance of a baffled
piston to a simple harmonic oscillator (where the piston head
was the mass), we added it to the resistance of the oscillator.
For finite structures, most analysts use mechanical loss factors to model structural damping. We can compute a radiation loss factor which can be used in a structural analysis to
represent the radiation damping of an acoustic fluid. A useful equation for the radiation loss factor of a uniform thickness, homogenous plate or shell structure (flat or curved) is
.
(15a)
The equation shows that the radiation loss damping is

directly proportional to fluid density, meaning that the heavier
the fluid, the more sound power is radiated, and the more
heavily damped the structure. An example would be a vibrating bell dunked in water. While in the air, the bells vibrations
would ring for a long time. When immersed in water, the
vibrations decay quickly. An extension of the above equation,
well known in the Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) community, relates the radiation loss factor to the radiation resistance:
,
(15b)
where M is the mass of the plate or shell.

Table 1 provides a useful list of the various sound radiation quantities and how they inter-relate.
The complementary problemStructural vibrations

induced by acoustic pressure waves
Whereas the sound radiated by vibrating objects is often
just an annoyance, the vibrations induced in structures by
impinging acoustic waves can be so high that the structures
crack and fail. This is clearly a more serious problem, and has
Table 1. List of sound power radiation quantities and their interrelationships.
16
Fig. 9. Mobility magnitude (top), radiation efficiency (middle), and radiated sound
power transfer function (bottom) of a simply supported 1m square 5 mm thick flat
steel plate in water driven at its quarter point (x=0.25 m, y=0.25 m).
been studied intently by those in the aerospace and nuclear

communities, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s.
Try holding your hand or fingers lightly on any structural surface, like a window when there is a lot of noise outside.
You will feel the window vibrating. The physics that explain
this phenomenon are the same as those that explain how a
vibrating structure radiates sound. As we will see, there are
several quantities in sound-induced vibration that are complementary to those in vibration-induced sound.
Let us start by considering the acoustic field adjacent to
a flat infinite plate that is struck by an incoming acoustic
wave. There are many pressure waves next to the structural
surfacethe incident wave, a reflected wave, and a wave reradiated by the structure, which has been forced into vibration by the incident and reflected waves. The sum of the incident and reflected waves forms a blocked pressure on the
surface, and if the surface is rigid, the blocked pressure field
is the total pressure. If the structure is flexible and vibrates, it
radiates a third pressure wave, which sums with the blocked
pair to form the overall pressure field.
Figure 10 shows the incident and reflected waves for a 30
degree angle of incidence (the angle is taken from the direction normal to the plate), along with the total blocked pressure field acting on a rigid surface. Notice how the two waves
combine to form a standing wave pattern in the direction
normal to the surface. The standing wave pattern propagates
in the direction parallel to the surface at a speed csin(),
where is the angle of incidence.
Infinite plate theory (discussed in Part 1 of this article)
can be used to estimate the plate vibration caused by the
blocked pressure field:
,
(16)
where z and z are the impedance (pressure/velocity in

this case) of the acoustic space and the plate.
The fluid impedance depends on the pressure waves
angle of incidence and the fluids characteristic impedance:
(17)
and the infinite plates impedance is

(18)
,
where is the structural loss factor and h is the plate thickness.
Examining the equation, we can see that the plate will
vibrate most when its structural impedance is minimized.
This will occur when the stiffness and mass terms in the
plates impedance cancel each other, or when D(k sin)4 =
h2 Let us find this frequency. To do so, we replace k with
/c, and we find that:
(19)
.
looks similar to a plates critical frequency, and to its critical radiation angle for frequencies above coincidence. In
fact, when is 90 degrees (the acoustic waves propagate
in the plane of the plate, or graze the plate), the coincidence
frequency is the critical frequency. The critical frequency, in
fact, is sometimes called the lowest coincidence frequency.
This means that there is no single frequency where the plate
vibrates mostthere are several of them, each of which correspond to a different angle of incidence.
Now let us consider how finite structures respond to
incident acoustic waves. However, we will do so not for waves
that are incident from specific angles, but for groups of waves
that are statistically incident from all angles, more commonly known as a diffuse acoustic field. Smith9 considered how a
simple harmonic oscillator responds to diffuse acoustic fields
in 1962, where the mean square velocity response of the
oscillator is
,
(20)
where M is the oscillator mass, R and R are the

radiation and structural resistances, and G is the autospectrum of the incident pressure.
The randomly excited simple harmonic oscillator problem is one of the origins of Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA),
a popular structural-acoustic analysis technique. For multiresonant structures, like plates, the plate energy is computed
rather than velocity:
(21)
Fig. 10. Blocked pressure field acting on a plate (right side of images) at 30 degree
angle of incidence. + and signs indicate phase variations in the waves.
Here, the radiation and structural resistances are averaged

over a frequency band spanned by and . Also, we
include the modal density n, which defines the number
of plate modes in the frequency band. As we can see, SEA is
statistical, averaging over bands of frequencies. SEA also
17
computes averages of response over space, since <E> is

averaged over the plate.
A full discussion of SEA is outside the scope of this tutorial, but you can find more information on SEA in the review
paper by Burroughs10 and a more thorough treatment of how
structures respond to diffuse fields in the article by Shorter
and Langley.11
You can use Eq. 21 without using SEA, though. You just
need to know the incident pressure spectrum of the diffuse
acoustic field, and the radiation and structural resistance. You
also need an estimate of the plates modal density, which is
,
(22)
Note that the plates modal density depends on frequency (as

do all modal densities).
Examining the equation, we see that the higher the radiation resistance, the higher the plate energy (and therefore
the higher the plates vibration). So, the better a plate radiates,
the easier it is to excite with incident pressure fields!
Now, what happens when there is also fluid on the other
side of the plate? How much of the incident sound gets
through the plate to the other side? This is the classic sound
transmission loss problem, and may be solved easily for an
infinite plate, and not so easily for a finite one.
Fahy4 provides a derivation of the sound power
transmission coefficient through an infinite plate in his textbook, and we repeat it here (assuming the fluids on both
sides of the plate are the same):
.
(23)
The red, green, and blue terms in the equation represent the
damping, mass, and stiffness of the plate, respectively. The
amount of sound transmitted depends on the fluid properties, the structural properties, frequency, and the angle of the
incident pressure wave with respect to the plate.
Some typical transmission loss plots, computed as
10log10(1/) are shown in Fig. 11. For acoustic waves not normally incident to the plate, sharp dips appear in the transmission loss. These dips correspond to sharp peaks in the transmission coefficient (transmission loss is the inverse of the
transmission coefficient), and act as strong pass-bands of incident sound. The dips are at the coincidence frequencies of the
plate. Recall that the coincidence frequencies depend not only
on the plate, but on the angle of incidence of the sound waves.
As the angle of incidence changes, the coincidence frequency
and the frequency of the transmission loss dip changes as well.
At low frequencies, the mass term in Eq. 23 determines
the transmission loss, which increases with the square of frequency (6 dB/octave, or 6 dB for each doubling of frequency). At high frequencies, above the coincidence dip, plate
18
Fig. 11. Typical transmission loss plot for variable angles of incidence. Grazing incidence refers to acoustic waves that are nearly in the plane of the plate.
stiffness is dominant, and the transmission loss increases

with the 6th power of frequency, or 18 dB/octave. Figure 11
shows what most people already know from experienceit is
hard to keep low-frequency sounds from propagating
through barriers. Consider this the next time you close a
door to block out sound from a hallway or another room. You
stop hearing mid-high frequency sounds, but still hear muffled low-frequency noise.
To visualize the sound field incident on and transmitted
by an infinite plate, Fig. 12 compares pressure and displacement of a plate at two conditions: well below, and near coincidence. In the example, we have set the plate loss factor
equal to 0. Try setting loss factor to zero and computing the
transmission coefficient in Eq. 23 at coincidence (remember,
this is where the acoustic wavenumber in the plane of the
plate matches the free bending wavenumber in the plate, or
ksin = k). You should compute a transmission coefficient
of 1, which is perfect sound transmission!
The strength, or depth of the coincidence dip depends
strongly on the plates loss factor . Designers of noise barriers (windows, doors) try hard to minimize the depth and
breadth of the coincidence dips. The most common approach
for mitigating coincidence dips is using constrained layer
damping, or CLD (we learned about this in Part 1 of this article). Automotive glass in luxury vehicles, and glass in highend office buildings usually have a thin layer of clear vinyl
sandwiched between two panes of glass.
For zero, or normal angle of incidence (sound waves normal to the plates surface), the transmission coefficient is not
indeterminant (you might think it would be, since there are
several terms in Eq. 23 that divide by sin()). The transmission coefficient actually simplifies to:
,
(24)
which corresponds to the well-known mass law. The mass
law transmission loss is shown in green in Fig. 11, and
increases with the square of frequency over all frequencies,
never showing a coincidence dip.

To improve transmission loss, many noise control engineers use two panels, particularly in windows. Called double
glazing, the panels are separated by an air (or other gas) gap.
Since transmission loss is additive, there is a substantial
improvement, much more so than simply increasing the
thickness of a single panel. However, most double panel systems have different panel thicknesses so that the coincident
dips of the two panels occur at different frequencies. While
this leads to two pass-bands for incident sound, it is generally preferable to have two weak pass bands rather than one
very strong one.
In most practical situations, acoustic waves impinging
on a panel do not arrive from the same angle. Consider a
window in an office building or a hotel. Sound waves arrive
from all angles, with a random distribution of the angles over
time (imagine incident sound from passing airplanes and
automobiles, reflecting off of adjacent buildings). Therefore,
statistical methods have been used to estimate a random
angle of incidence transmission loss for low frequencies:
(25)
where TL0 is 10log10(1/f=0), or the mass-law normal incidence transmission loss. Since transmission loss is maximized (transmission coefficient is minimized) at normal
incidence, the random angle of incidence transmission loss is
a fraction of that at normal incidence.
Be careful using the above expression at high frequen-
Fig. 12. Incident and transmitted sound fields around an infinite 25 mm thick steel
plate, 30 degree angle of incidence. Topat 50% of coincidence, Bottomat coincidence. Dark blue and red indicate high pressures, and green indicates low pressures.
G.R.A.S. Sound & Vibration cost-efficient systems for beam-forming and acoustic holography.
MICROPHONE ARRAY MODULES

Depending on the application and the nature of
the emitted sound field, the microphones are available
as pressure- or free-field types, all with a built-in
Transducer-Electronic-Data-Sheet (TEDS).
For multi-channel systems without TEDS options,
we offer uni-gain versions with pre-adjusted gain.
The array modules for mounting the microphones are
available in various spacing configurations depending
on frequency requirements.
The amount of microphones and modules in the array
is only limited by the channels of the analysis system.
As always, we are ready to act on request, if our standard
solutions do not fit in with your requirements.
G.R.A.S. Sound & Vibration A/S Skovlytoften 33 2840 Holte Denmark

Tel.: +45 4566 4046 Fax: +45 4566 4047 E-mail: gras@gras.dk www.gras.dk
19
cies! It does not include the coincidence dip, or the high-frequency stiffness effects. To consider these effects, and those
of finite panel boundaries, other techniques are used, like
SEA. In fact, one of the early SEA applications was for single
and double panel transmission loss calculations. Price and
Crockers famous papers12, 13 clearly show the coincidence dips
in transmission loss, and the importance of varying panel
thicknesses in double panel systems.
Measurements of soundstructure interaction

The sound radiated by vibrating structures, and conversely,
the vibrations induced in structures by sound fields, are commonly measured in two types of chambers: reverberation rooms,
and anechoic rooms. Interconnected rooms are used to measure
the transmission loss of barriers, like windows and doors.
Accelerometers mounted to structures can provide a spatially averaged normal velocity. Also, non-contact velocity
measurements are often made using laser vibrometry, eliminating the mass-loading effects of the accelerometers on the
test structure, and reducing test times.
Measuring sound power is more difficult than measuring vibration. In air, arrays of microphones may be used to
measure the spatial variability of pressure. In water,
hydrophones are used. Sound pressures are measured quite
differently in reverberant and anechoic rooms, though.
In a reverberant room, the acoustic modes of the air in
the room are excited by a vibrating structure. When the
acoustic cavity modal density is high, the rooms pressure
field becomes nearly diffuse, such that pressures measured at
just a few locations randomly spaced throughout the room
may be used to estimate the total sound power radiated by a
vibrating object. The sound power is computed using the
measured pressures, along with a few of the reverberation
rooms parameters, such as the volume and the reverberation
time. The reverberation time is inversely proportional to the
rooms loss factorthe longer a pressure impulse takes to
decay, the lower the rooms loss factor.
The accuracy of a reverberation chamber sound power
measurement depends on the rooms modal density and reverberation time (among other things). The sound power is actually a statistical mean, which is bracketed by a standard deviation
at each measurement frequency. In general, the higher a rooms
modal density and the wider the frequency bandwidth, the
smaller the standard deviation. Most reverberation room sound
power measurements are therefore made over wide frequency
bands that contain several acoustic modes. One-third octave frequency bands are commonly used.
There are standards14, 15 available to help an experimentalist quantify a reverberation chambers characteristics, and
conduct a sound power measurement. The standards, however, are specific to rooms filled with air. To make measurements in a reverberant water tank, some modifications to the
approaches in the standards are necessary. Conlon describes
these modifications, and applies them to ARL/Penn States
reverberant water tank in his NoiseCon 2004 article.16
Photographs of a metal pressure vessel being tested in
ARL/Penn States tank are shown in Fig. 13. The vessel is
struck by an impact hammer at several points, and the pres20
Fig. 13. Impact hammer measurements on cylindrical shell structure submerged in

ARL/Penn State Reverberant Water Tank. Topshell submerged in tank with diver;
bottom, shell suspended over tank.
sures measured at five hydrophone locations are used to estimate the sound power transfer function (P/F2).
The sound power transfer functions for several drive locations on an elbowed pipe (the same pipe described in Part 1 of
this article) are shown in Fig. 14, adapted from another
NoiseCon article,17 this one from 2005. The measurements
were made in one-third octave bands, and show that the sound
power transfer functions vary with drive location (just as
mobility functions do). Annotations on the graph show where
various shell modes cut on (again, see Part 1 of this article to
refresh your memory on what shell modes are).
It is often useful to compare sound power transfer functions to that of an ideal dipole source:
,
(26)
where |F|2 represents the square of the r.m.s. force amplitude.

This would be the sound made by an oscillating point drive
in space. At some frequencies, most notably those of structural resonance, the sound power transfer function for the
elbowed pipe is higher than that of a point dipole, showing
that the structure amplifies the force drive at those frequen-
required in reverberant rooms to compute radiated sound

power, many more pressure measurements are required to do
so in an anechoic room.
Total sound power must be integrated over a closed surface around the sound source. Also, acoustic intensity must
be measured, sometimes in the near-field of the structure.
This means many intensity measurements are made over several points around the structure. The points may be defined
over a hemisphere or a box-like shape. Standards are available18 to guide your measurements, and acoustic intensity
probes, like the one shown in Fig. 16, are widely available.
Fig. 14. Sound power radiated by Schedule 10 Steel 3 inch pipe with elbow, pipe
length/diameter~12.
cies. At other frequencies, usually between structural resonances, the structure attenuates the drive.
The sound power transfer functions can also be combined with a surface-averaged mobility measurement to
compute radiation efficiency:
.
(27)
Pressure, intensity, and sound power are measured very differently in anechoic rooms. The walls of a typical anechoic
chamber are coated with sound absorption materials. Foam
wedges are common, as shown in Fig. 15. The absorbing
material nearly eliminates the reflection of sound by the
walls. The pressure measured around a sound source placed
in an anechoic room is due only to acoustic waves propagating away from the source.
Anechoic environments allow for more refined measurements of sound fields, both over space and frequency.
Directivity plots like those in Fig. 3 and Fig. 8 may be measured. Also, narrow-band frequency spectra may be computed. However, whereas only a few pressure measurements are
Fig. 15. ARL/Penn State's Anechoic Chamber.
Fig. 16. Hand-held acoustic intensity probe. Two microphones are separated by a
known distance x so that particle velocity may be computed using a finite difference approximation. The mean pressure and estimated particle velocity are combined to compute the active, or real part of acoustic intensity in the direction along
the x-axis.
Two measurement chambers are required to determine a

barriers transmission loss. Often, a thick, nearly rigid wall is
built between the two rooms. The wall includes an opening,
into which a barrier is mounted. One of the rooms is considered the source room, and is ensonified with sound waves,
which strike the barrier. The sound power in the receiver
room is measured, and a transmission coefficient is calculated. Usually, the source room is reverberant, and the receiver
room is anechoic, with measurements made according to the
procedures we described above.
Boundary element modeling of sound fields

Boundary element methods have been used to predict
acoustic fields for about 45 years, and there is a vast amount
of literature on the subject. Although these methods can be
used to compute both interior and exterior acoustic fields,
the focus here is on computing exterior acoustic fields where
boundary elements have distinct advantages. Since this article is at the level of a tutorial, our main goal will be to give the
reader a brief synopsis of the basic analysis techniques and
the current state of the art. For the sake of simplicity, the
specified boundary condition and radiated acoustic field are
assumed to be time-harmonic.
A completely general solution for the pressure field of a
21
vibrating structure can be derived in the form of an integral

equation, which is an equation with an unknown function
under an integral sign. Even though we cannot actually solve
the integral equation for the unknown function explicitly for
any but the simplest problems, it is still useful to know the
form of the solution in terms of physical variables. Also, the
solution provides great insight into how the problem might
be solved numerically, and, as such, the Kirchhoff-Helmholtz
integral equation (KHIE) commonly provides the starting
point for many numerical formulations:
(28)
In the KHIE, r represents a point in the acoustic fluid
and q is a point on the boundary of the fluid S, or boundary
surface. In the context of sound radiation from structural
vibrations, the boundary surface is the outer surface of the
structure in contact with the acoustic medium. The function
G stands for Greens function, and G and dG/dn in the KHIE
represent the acoustic fields of simple (monopole) and dipole
sources, respectively, distributed along the boundary surface.
The dipole sources are aligned in the direction perpendicular
to the boundary surface. The monopole and dipole sources
are functions of the point q where they are located and the
field point r. The KHIE shows that the acoustic field depends
only on what happens at the boundaries since the surface
vibrations cause the radiated acoustic field.
By studying the solution for the acoustic field given by
the KHIE, much can be learned about how to derive a
numerical solution. Unfortunately, its simplicity is deceiving.
The acoustic fields of simple and dipole sources are singular
functions of the source and field point locations, such that
they become infinite when the two points coincide (when r
q ). However, in the KHIE, these singular functions add
together to yield nonsingular pressure and velocity fields.
Taking R to be the distance between r and q, the singularities
for the different sources can be categorized as:
(1) pressure of a simple source G ~1/R,
(2) velocity of a simple source dG/dn0 ~ 1/R2,
(3) pressure of a dipole source dG/dn ~ 1/R2,
(4) velocity of a dipole source d(dG/dn0)/dn ~1/R3.
The process of taking a derivative makes a singular function more singular. For example, taking the derivative of r-1
with respect to r gives -r-2. When r is less than unity, the function r-1 is smaller than r-2, so that r-2 goes to infinity faster as
r 0. A function that depends on 1/R is called weakly singular, one that depends on 1/R2 is called strongly singular,
and one that depends on 1/R3 is called hyper-singular.
How is it possible, then, for singular functions to add up
to give finite pressure and velocity fields? First, integration is
a smoothing operation. Thus, it tends to reduce the level of
singularity, the same way differentiation increases it. Because
the functions are integrated over a surface, this process essentially reduces the level of singularity by two orders. Thus, it
makes sense that weakly and strongly singular functions
should yield finite values. However, we would not expect a
22
hyper-singular function integrated over a surface to yield a

finite value. Indeed, the only reason the velocity field of a
dipole source yields a finite value is because the surface pressure and normal velocity, which are weighting functions for
simple and dipole sources, are related through a gradient
operation. To illustrate, consider a right-angled corner, where
the surface normal is discontinuous. As we travel along the
surface towards the corner, the pressure field must change
such that the gradient operation produces the correct velocity on the other side of the corner.19 The level of continuity in
the pressure field is also important. In the exact solution, the
surface pressure is an absolutely continuous function, such
that the function itself, as well as all of its derivatives, are continuous. This level of continuity is impossible to duplicate
with simple polynomial approximations. However, the pressure and surface velocity, taken together, must enforce - i
v = - p as we travel along the boundary. Thus, it is impossible to duplicate the level of continuity in the actual surface
pressure distribution with simple interpolation functions and
it is also impossible to exactly enforce the specified boundary
conditions!
From a practical point of view, how is all this relevant?
First, many of the research papers written about boundary
element methods in the last ten years are concerned with
sorting out the mathematical details of the integrals. These
papers are written by, and for, people writing their own
boundary element codes. A novice would find it very difficult
to understand all the mathematical complexities.
(Admittedly, even after years of dedicated effort, we find
many of the papers incomprehensible.) A reader interested in
a simple explanation of boundary element methods will find
the earliest papers on the subject, written in the 60s, much
easier to understand.20, 21, 22 Also, for the casual users who are
not trying to write their own boundary element code, it is
only important to understand that current boundary element
codes are not perfect. They probably do not take care of the
singularities in the KHIE such that the acoustic field is strictly non-singular. Nonetheless, it has been well shown over the
years that even simple approximations for the pressure and
normal surface velocity weighting functions yield adequate
numerical solutions for many problems.22
After constructing and solving the matrix system, the
pressures and normal velocities are known for each element
of the boundary surface. The KHIE can then be used to
directly compute the pressure at each desired field point location. The overall sound power output can be computed by
setting up a grid of field point locations on a surface enclosing the structure and numerically integrating the acoustic
intensity over the surface. In theory, the power output can
also be computed directly using the pressure and normal
velocity on the boundary surface, but this is problematic
because this is where the largest errors tend to occur in a
boundary element solution.
Aside from the mathematical details in evaluating the
integrals, most recent innovations in boundary element
methods have concerned ways to increase the speed of the
computations and reduce storage requirements. As with all
numerical computations, boundary element methods have
benefited enormously from the rapid increase in computer

processor speed and memory. Since boundary element computations are repeated many times at different frequencies, it
is easy to split jobs up and assign them to different computers or processors.
In practice, boundary element methods are very competitive for all but the very largest engineering problems, where
the matrix inversion and multiplication dominate the solution times. This is especially true if the time required to create models is factored into the analysis. In this respect,
boundary element methods are relatively quick and easy.
Simple rules of thumb can be used to determine if boundary
element methods will be applicable for a specific problem.
Generally, six elements are required per acoustic wavelength
to accurately compute an acoustic field. Knowing the surface
area S of the boundary and the maximum frequency of interest, the required number of acoustic elements is given as
S/(/3fmax)2. Three matrices of this size will be required to
compute the matrix multiplication, and it is usually best to do
the computations in double-precision, thus requiring 16
bytes for each element of the matrices.
Modeling soundstructure coupling
Recall that a moving structure compresses and contracts

neighboring fluids, which act as a continuous elastic blob
around the structure. When the fluid is heavy, its pressure
loading affects the structural vibrations. To compute these
effects, the boundary element model must be coupled to a
representation of the structure.
The previous analysis has shown that an acoustic impedance matrix, relating the pressures to the normal component
of velocity on the boundary surface, can be computed as a
function of frequency using boundary element methods. We
now want to combine this result with a finite element analysis of the structural vibrations to include the effects of the
pressure field. In a finite element analysis, the displacements
are written in the form
,
(29)
where M, B, and K are the mass, damping, and stiffness

matrices, d is the displacement field of the structure, and F is
the vector of forces applied to the structure.
To include the pressure field in the finite element analysis, the impedance matrix must be transformed from its
dependence on normal surface velocity to nodal displacements. For time-harmonic problems, the displacement field
on the outer surface of the structure can be used to compute
the normal component of the surface velocity as a simple dotproduct: vn = v . n = -i d . n. Thus, a matrix relationship can
be derived to convert the complete displacement field into a
normal surface velocity vector. This matrix will have zeros for
all interior nodes not in contact with the surrounding fluid.
Similarly, the matrix will also be zero for displacement
degrees of freedom on the boundary surface tangential to the
outward surface normal. Post-multiplying the acoustic
impedance matrix by the transformation matrix then yields a
matrix relationship between the pressure field on the boundary and the finite element displacement vector. Including the
result for the pressure field on the boundary surface in the

finite element equations of motion yields
.
(30)
Given an input force vector, it is theoretically possible to

solve this equation for the displacement vector, which now
includes fluid coupling. In a finite element analysis, the equation system is highly-banded because each element only
interacts with other elements through the nodes. However, in
a boundary element analysis, every node interacts with every
other node, so that the acoustic impedance matrix is generally fully-populated. It then becomes very time-consuming to
solve the matrix system in its present form. Various alternative strategies are possible where the matrices are subdivided
into degrees of freedom with and without fluid coupling. It is
also possible to treat the acoustic pressure field on the
boundary surface as the primary variable.21 Ultimately, many
researchers instead reformulate the problem in terms of a
modal frequency response analysis (which is the approach we
use at Penn State). In a modal frequency response, the mass,
damping, and stiffness matrices are pre- and post-multiplied
by mode shapes, and the applied force vector is pre-multiplied by the mode shapes. The resulting system, which is usually much smaller in size than the system defined in physical
coordinates, is solved to compute modal coefficients. The
modal coefficients tell us how much each mode contributes
to the overall response, and are multiplied by the mode
shapes to compute that physical response.
Using the coupled FE/BE formulation, the time required
to compute and store the acoustic impedance matrix as a
function of frequency typically dominates the overall solution times. To speed up this part of the process, it is common
to condense the structural displacement variables into a
coarser set of acoustic variables. To illustrate, Fig. 17 shows
two structural and acoustic meshes for a loudspeaker.
Since both the structural and acoustic fields require
approximately six elements per wavelength, this process
assumes that the structural waves vary more rapidly than the
acoustic waves. This is true below the coincidence frequency,
and is valid up to a relatively high frequency for structures
submerged in water.
To demonstrate the typical results of a coupled FE/BE
analysis, two example problems will be considered. The first
is the familiar example of a thin circular cylindrical shell in
Fig. 17. A structural mesh for a speaker with two different acoustic meshes.
23
an infinite circular baffle. For simply-supported boundary

conditions, the structural displacements can be determined
analytically. Similarly, the acoustic Greens function is
known analytically for a simple source outside of a rigid circular cylinder, and thus for this problem the acoustic field
can also be determined analytically, although it can only be
evaluated numerically. Solutions for the in vacuo and fluidcoupled resonance frequencies are given by Berot and
Peseux.23 For this problem, the cylinder has radius 0.4 m,
length 1.2 m, and is 3 mm thick. Its material properties are
given as E = 200 GPa, = 7850 kg/m3, v =0.3, and the surrounding water has properties c = 1500 m/s, and = 1000
kg/m3. We note that the thicknessto-radius ratio is less
than 0.01 for this example, and thus thin shell theory is
applicable and we expect a relatively large shift in the resonance frequencies due to fluid-loading. Our goal will be to
reproduce Berot and Peseuxs results. In the numerical computations, the structural analysis proceeds as usual, but we
cannot simply model the boundary surface in the acoustic
analysis because the circular baffle extends to infinity in
both directions.
Following the procedure used by Berot and Peseux in
their numerical computations, we will truncate the baffle on
both sides of the cylinder approximately half its length
beyond the vibrating portion and close off the ends with flat
endcaps. Figure 18 shows the first two computed in vacuo
mode shapes and resonance frequencies for the shell.
In the finite element analysis, the displacement is set to
zero at the ends of the cylinder in the radial and torsional
directions, but the axial displacement is unconstrained. As
we will show, a fairly fine mesh is required in the circumferential direction to properly represent the acoustic impedance of the higher order modes. For example, to correctly
represent a mode with 8 circumferential wavelengths, we
need (8)(6)=48 acoustic elements around the circumference. The acoustic mesh does not have to be nearly as
refined in the axial direction because the structural stiffness
is much higher. With this in mind, the structural mesh has
24 elements in the axial direction and 48 elements around
the circumference. The acoustic meshes have 8, 12, and 12
elements in the axial direction, and 16, 24, and 48 elements
Fig. 18. Finite element predictions for the first two mode shapes and resonance frequencies of a thin shell. The rigid ends on both sides of the shell simulate semi-infinite rigid baffles.
around the circumference. Table 2 lists the resonance frequency ratios given by Berot and Peseux along with numerical predictions for the various acoustic element meshes.
In the table, NA is the number of acoustic elements for
each of the boundary element meshes. Clearly, the numerical and analytical predictions match each other closely,
although a relatively fine acoustic mesh is necessary in the
circumferential direction to achieve convergence for the
higher order modes, as was expected. Overall, for structures
submerged in water, the fluid-loading analyses has been
shown to yield excellent predictions for the added mass.
We consider a cavity-backed plate as a second example
problem with structural-acoustic coupling. In the 1970s,
Guy and Bhattacharya24 studied transmission loss through a
cavity-backed finite plate and their results have been used
subsequently by several authors to validate numerical predictions. We will similarly use the problem to illustrate how
dipole sources can be used to model interior and exterior
acoustic fields simultaneously in a scattering problem.
Figure 19 shows the geometry of the cavity and plate.
The plate is 0.914 mm thick and is made of brass with
properties E = 106 GPa, = 8500 kg/m3, v = 0.3, and the
surrounding air has properties c = 340 m/s, and = 1.2
kg/m3. The plate is simply-supported and the backing cavity has rigid walls. We want to compute the transmission loss
through the plate to a field point location at the center of
the back wall of the cavity. Guy and Bhattacharyas transmission loss is actually just a ratio of the incident pressure
and the pressure near the back wall of the box:
.
Table 2. Analytical and numerical predictions for the resonance frequency ratios
(in fluid/in vacuo) of the circular shell. Mode orders are indicated as (m,n) pairs,
where m is the order along the axis, and n is the circumferential harmonic.
24
(31)
For the numerical analysis, we can perform the computations in one of two ways. We could simply apply mechanical forces to produce a uniform pressure to the top surface
of the plate, as in the studies by S. Suzuki, et al.25 and M.
Guerich and M. A. Hamdi,26 or we could simulate the experiment using an acoustic source as the excitation. We will use
the latter method. The surface of the cube is divided evenly
into 144 quadrilateral elements, yielding a boundary surface mesh with 864 structural elements.
The incident pressure is computed knowing the source
location and the distance to the center of the plate. The
results in Fig. 20 show very good agreement between our
numerical predictions and Guy and Bhattacharyas experi-
Fig. 20. Transmission loss as a function of frequency for a cavity-backed plate.
Fig. 19. Dimensions for the cavity-backed plate example problem.
mental measurements, thus demonstrating that dipole

sources can be used to model both the interior and exterior
acoustic fields simultaneously.
Summary
In Part 2 of this tutorial on structural acoustics, we have
learned about how acoustic fluids interact with structures,
both as an acceptor and a cause of vibrational energy. We
have presented some simple and difficult concepts in a relatively short article (entire textbooks are devoted to the subjects we have discussed), and hope the information is useful
as a handy reference. For those of you who are interested in
learning more about these topics, please look through the
references we have provided. You are also welcome to enroll
in the SoundStructure Interaction course offered by the
Penn State Graduate Program in Acoustics for a more thorough treatment of this subject.
Of course, there is much we have not explained, but we
can refer you to other strong references on those subjects.
For example, we have focused almost entirely on the interaction of structures with exterior fluids. Acoustic cavities
contain resonances which can interact with the walls that
bound the interior space, particularly at low frequencies.
Some classic papers which introduce this topic are those by
Pretlove27 and Dowell.28 During the Active Noise Control
(ANC) boom of the 1980s and 1990s, many people investigated how to control the sound within acoustic cavity
modes by driving the enclosure boundaries with tuned
forces. Nelson and Elliotts textbook29 is a good reference on
ANC.
Another relatively modern structuralacoustic topic is
Nearfield Acoustic Holography (NAH), which is an inverse
technique for inferring a structures surface vibrations from
a complex pressure hologram measured near the surface.
Once the surface velocities are known, numerical boundary
value techniques can be used to compute the far-field sound
radiation. We recommend the textbook by Williams30 to
those interested in NAH.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful for our daily interaction with the
ARL/Penn State Structural Acoustics Department (Andrew
Barnard, Robert Campbell, Stephen Conlon, David Jenkins,
and Tim McDevitt), along with some of our students in Penn
States Graduate Program in Acoustics, in particular, Ben
Doty, who measured the response of the elbowed pipe.AT
References for further reading
1
2
3
G. H. Koopmann and J. B. Fahnline, Designing Quiet Structures

(Academic Press, San Diego, 1997).
R. D. Blevins, Flow-Induced Vibration, 2nd Edition (Krieger
Publishing Company, Malbar, FL, 2001).
E. Naudascher and D. Rockwell, Flow-Induced VibrationsAn
Engineering Guide (Dover Publications, Mineola, NY 2005).
25
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
26
F. J. Fahy, Sound and Structural Vibration: Radiation,

Transmission, and Response (Academic Press, San Diego,
1987).
A. D. Pierce, AcousticsAn Introduction to its Physical Principles
and Applications (Acoustical Society of America, Melville, NY,
1991).
M. S. Junger and D. Feit, Sound, Structures, and Their Interaction
(Acoustical Society of America, Melville, NY, 1993).
G. Maidanik, Response of Ribbed Panels to Reverberant
Acoustic Fields, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 34, 809826 (1962).
C. E. Wallace, Radiation Resistance of a Rectangular Panel, J.
Acoust. Soc. Am. 51, 946952 (1972).
P. W. Smith, Jr., Response and Radiation of Structural Modes
Excited by Sound, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 34, 640647 (1962).
C. B. Burroughs, R. W. Fischer, and F. R. Kern, An Introduction
to Statistical Energy Analysis, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 101,
17791789 (1997).
P. J. Shorter and R. S. Langley, On the Reciprocity Relationship
Between Direct field Radiation and Diffuse Reverberant
Loading, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 117, 8595 (2005).
M. J. Crocker and A. J. Price, Sound Transmission Using
Statistical Energy Analysis, J. Sound Vibration 9, 469486
(1969).
A. J. Price and M. J. Crocker, Sound Transmission Through
Double Panels Using Statistical Energy Analysis, J. Acoust. Soc.
Am. 47, 683 693 (1970).
ISO 3741/ANSI S12.51, Determination of Sound Power Levels of
Noise Sources using Sound Pressure Precision Methods for
Reverberation Rooms (Acoustical Society of America, Melville,
NY, 1999).
ISO 354, Measurement of Sound Absorption in a Reverberation
Room (International Organization for Standardization,
Geneva, 2003).
S. C. Conlon, S. A. Hambric, and W. K. Bonness, Evaluation of
a reverberant water tank for radiated power measurements,
Proceedings of NoiseCon 2004, Baltimore, MD, 1214 July 2004.
(Institute of Noise Control Engineering, Ames, IA, 2004).
B. J. Doty, S. A. Hambric, S. C. Conlon, and J. B. Fahnline,
Structural-Acoustic Measurements of Pipes with Ninety-
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
Degree Elbows, Under Water Loading, Proceedings of NoiseCon

2005, Minneapolis, MN, 1719 October 2005 (Institute of Noise
Control Engineering, Ames, IA, 2005).
ANSI S12.351990 (R1996), Determination of Sound Power
Levels of Noise Sources in Anechoic and Hemi-Anechoic Rooms,
(Acoustical Society of America, Melville, NY, 1996).
L. J. Gray and E. Lutz, On the Treatment of Corners in the
Boundary Element Method, J. Comp. Appl. Math. 32, 369386
(1990).
L. G. Copley, Integral Equation Method for Radiation from
Vibrating Bodies, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 41, 807816 (1967).
H. A. Schenck, Improved Integral Formulation for Acoustic
Radiation Problems, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 44, 4158 (1968).
L. H. Chen and D. G. Schweikert, Sound Radiation from an
Arbitrary Body, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 35, 16261632 (1963).
F. Berot and B. Peseux, Vibro-acoustic behavior of submerged
cylindrical shells: Analytical formulation and numerical model,
J. Fluids and Struct. 12(8), 9591004 (1998).
R. W. Guy and M. C. Bhattacharya,The transmission of sound
through a cavity-backed finite plate, J. Sound Vib. 27(2),
207223 (1973).
S. Suzuki, S. Maruyama, and H. Ido, Boundary element analysis of cavity noise problems with complicated boundary conditions, J. Sound and Vib. 130(1), 7991 (1989).
M. Guerich and H. A. Hamdi, A numerical method for vibroacoustic problems with incompatible finite element meshes
using B-spline functions, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 105(3), 16821694
(1999).
A. J. Pretlove, Forced Vibrations of a Rectangular Panel Backed
by a Closed Rectangular Cavity, J. Sound Vib. 3, 252261
(1966).
E. H. Dowell, G. F. Gorman, and D. A. Smith, Acoustoelasticity:
General Theory, Acoustic Natural Modes and Forced Response
to Sinusoidal Excitation, Including Comparisons with
Experiment, J. Sound Vib. 52, 519542 (1977).
P. A. Nelson and S. J. Elliott, Active Control of Sound (Academic
Press, San Diego, 1993).
E. G. Williams, Fourier AcousticsSound Radiation and Nearfield
Acoustic Holography (Academic Press, San Diego, 1999).
Stephen A. Hambric
is head of the
Structural Acoustics Department at
the Applied Research
Lab at Penn State
and Associate Professor in the Graduate Program in
Acoustics. Prior to
joining Penn State
in 1996, Dr. Hambric
worked for nine
Steve Hambric and his daughter Lily.
years in the Compu t a t i o n a l
Mechanics Office at the Naval Surface Warfare Center,
Carderock Division. Dr. Hambric has directed many numerical and experimental flow and structural acoustics research and
development programs for the Navy, U.S. industry, and the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He has authored over 60
conference and journal articles and advised many graduate students at Penn State. He teaches courses in Structural Acoustics,
and Writing for Acousticians on campus at Penn State, and also
to off-campus students working in industry and government.
He currently serves on the board of directors of the Institute for
Noise Control Engineering (INCE), on the Executive
Committee of the ASMEs Noise Control and Acoustics
Doors up to STC 55
Division, and as an associate editor of ASMEs Journal of

Vibration and Acoustics.
John B. Fahnline is
a research associate at the Applied
Research Laboratory and an assistant professor of
acoustics at Penn
State. He holds a
Ph.D. in Acoustics
from the Pennsylvania State University.
As a post-doctoral
r e s e a r c h e r, D r.
John Fahnline (in background) and his niece Mariel. Fahnline designed
and implemented a
practical, efficient,
and accurate method for numerically solving general, three
dimensional acoustic radiation problems which can be
applied to problems in design optimization and active noise
control. The code, named POWER, is currently being used
at the ARL Penn State to predict noise radiation from the
structural resonances of compound propulsors. Dr.
Fahnline coauthored a book on design optimization with Dr.
Gary Koopmann.
Certied to meet ASTM E90,

E336, E1408 and E413
Hundreds of congurations
Unlimited design possibilities
See whats possible, visit our project gallery at:

www.KriegerProducts.com/gallery
Visit: KriegerProducts.com
Call: 1-800-251-5175
27
ACOUSTICS COURSES AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL:

HOW CAN WE ATTRACT MORE STUDENTS?
Ilene J. Busch-Vishniac
Johns Hopkins University, Department of Mechanical Engineering
3400 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-2681
and
James E. West
Johns Hopkins University, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
3400 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-2681
A study conducted in 1996 by acoustics is perceived as a sion, through examination of the variPatricia Kuhl, then Vice President of
ous elements of a good course, and by
the Acoustical Society of America
attention to the special opportunity
mature field with waning
(ASA), and Joseph Dickey, then Chair
afforded acoustics to address issues of
of the ASA Membership Committee,
diversity. Based on our findings, we
interest shown by students,
found that the ASA membership is prepresent actions that might have a posidominantly male and aging.1 The ASA
tive impact on student recruitment into
and that one means to
also is overwhelmingly comprised of
acoustics and on the excitement associmajority populations (although we do counter this trend is to create ated with the field.
not collect race/ethnicity data so it is
Characteristics of the profession
not possible to provide hard data here).
more courses at the
One means of studying the
Students now make up 14 percent of
acoustics
profession is to consider the
the membership.
undergraduate level designed
ASA as a proxy for the professional
While there is nothing terribly surdemographics. The ASA was formed
prising in the results of the memberto attract students to the
in 1929 as a scientific professional
ship survey, it suggests that the largest
organization and it joined with three
professional society of acousticians in
profession.
other such groups to establish the
the world is not very diverse. It also
American Institute of Physics just two
raises a question as to whether the
years later. Today the American Institute of Physics has ten
number of students entering the field is sufficient to sustain
member societies and 23 affiliated societies. Of these, the
the profession in the face of a large number of anticipated
ASA is arguably the broadest in character, going far
retirements in the near future.
beyond a focus on physical matters related to sound. It is
Every profession has areas that rise and fall in popularthis characteristic of breadth that helps define us as a proity with advances in the field. In acoustics, for instance, the
fession. It is visible in our journal, which presents scholarbiologically-related areas have become far more popular of
ly articles on all aspects of acoustics from new musical
late than some of the more traditional, physics-based areas.
instruments and animal communication to underwater
Many disciplines go through significant cycling of popularsound propagation. Our breadth is also obvious at our
ity driven by funding, applications, and social issues or large
conferences, which include presentations organized by our
events. Civil engineering, for instance, saw an up tick in the
13 technical committees, and in our standards, education,
number of entering students shortly after the catastrophic
and outreach activities. Our members include physicists,
events of September 11, 2001 and the same is anticipated
biologists, engineers, architects, psychologists, musicians,
now in reaction to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. It
physiologists, speech experts, and entertainment industry
is also natural to see a general increase in stability in the
professionals. The types of jobs performed by our memnumbers of people entering a field as it matures accompabers include those from academia, government, consultnied perhaps by a gradual decline in student numbers as
ing, manufacturing, and service industriesa greater
they opt instead for emerging areas. However, as areas rise
breadth than normally found in the AIP member societies
and fall, it is also true that groups of people can take actions
and broader than is typical of a single professional organto help sustain or grow them. It is in this context that we
ization.
consider the role of acoustics education and focus on the
Our unusual breadth as an organization is both a boon
undergraduate level.
and a curse. It gives us a much greater chance to appeal to a
The premise of this article is that acoustics is perceived
wide variety of people. However, it also requires us to offer
as a mature field with waning interest shown by students,
a bigger range of activities to meet the needs of different
and that one means to counter this trend is to create more
groups and this has often prompted significant discussion
courses at the undergraduate level designed to attract stuwithin the ASA. A good example of the tension our breadth
dents to the profession. We examine this by consideration of
creates is our standards activity. Many of the academic
the unique characteristics that define the acoustics profes28
members of the ASA see standards work as tedious and not

very useful to them. However, our product manufacturers
and service providers rely heavily on standards. Thus, to
serve our membership we must include standards activity
and assume a leadership role in the promulgation of standards related to acoustics.
A second important characteristic of acoustics is that it is
generally a topic found in classes only at the graduate level. In
this sense acoustics is like opticsboth are graduate degree
programs. However, unlike optics, which is normally mentioned (at least superficially) in required undergraduate
physics and engineering courses, acoustics is rarely included
in the core curriculum of any undergraduate major today. It
is this lack of exposure to a wide swath of students that poses
our greatest obstacle to the recruitment of students into the
acoustics profession. At a minimum, it suggests that we need
to create popular elective courses in acoustics to reach a wide
student base.
While there are certainly a number of academic institutions that offer elective courses in acoustics, these tend to be
focused on upper level undergraduates at the junior or senior
level in science and engineering degree programs. Most often,
a given institution has only a single such elective course, making it difficult for the interested student to pursue the topic further via a minor or concentration in acoustics. Additionally,
because the elective might be taken in the senior year, it is
often too late to have an impact on graduate school selection.
An alternative to this approach is to offer an early elective
course on acoustics that is intended to capture the imagination, and a later elective course that goes into greater technical
depth. This sort of approach has been used very successfully at
Tufts University, which introduced a series of freshman courses open to all students but focusing on technology with an aim
of recruiting students to engineering. For instance, a freshman
course called Gourmet Engineering is very popular and introduces students to the concepts of heat transfer and microwaves
via a focus on cooking. These courses were found to result in a
net flux of students into engineering, contrary to the more
common problem of high student attrition from engineering.
An example of the sort of acoustics course that might be
offered early in a college career is offered at the University of
Rochester. There, a freshman course called the Physics of
Music has been a staple for decades (and was responsible for
one of the authors choosing to pursue acoustics professionally). In a recent form, the students not only learned elementary
physical properties of sound, but also made polyvinyl chloride
(PVC)-pipe flutes that they used to perform original music
that a student wrote for the PVC flute choir while in the class.
A third characteristic of acoustics is that there is a clear
set of common products and manufacturers associated with
the field. While this does not uniquely define acoustics, it
does set it apart from particle physics, for instance. Common
products that are entirely or primarily acoustical in function
include musical instruments, microphones and loudspeakers, MP3 players, hearing aids, and all manner of telecommunication equipment. In particular, for college-age people,
we have become a society obsessed with music. Where a
mere decade ago .wav files were the purview of acousticians,
they are now the common domain of students downloading

music onto MP3 players, cell phones, Personal Digital
Assistants (PDAs), and laptop computers. The proliferation
of portable personal listening devices provides acoustics with
a new tool for attracting students to the profession, although
we have been slow to make use of the opportunity.
A fourth characteristic of acoustics is that it affects our
daily lives, especially in our urban centers where the high density of people leads to greater intrusion of transportation and
activity noise into homes. Daily exposure to high noise levels
where we live and work alters both physical and mental attitudes and contributes to an overall reduction in the quality of
life. Many urban dwellers are not even aware of their contribution to the problem, and building construction often ignores
the need for improved isolation and separation.
The four characteristics of acoustics discussed above
provide a context for thinking about how to make the profession more attractive to students. This leads to a number of
questions such as the following: Are we offering undergraduate courses in acoustics that provide a glimpse of the
breadth of the field and the wide range of job opportunities
available? Are we providing enough chances for students to
connect with acoustics before they need to make choices
about jobs or graduate school? How can we take advantage of
the plethora of common acoustics products and, in particular, the comfort level of students with music files on computers to engage students in acoustics?
In the following sections of this article we consider these
questions and others that are similar by focusing on the elements of classes in acousticstexts, applications, hands-on
experiences, pedagogical techniques, and issues of diversity. We
then conclude with a game plan for creating an environment
that encourages students to consider a profession in acoustics.
Acoustics textbooks
The textbook chosen for a class is very important because
students generally expect instructors to follow the chosen text
closely. This is not simply a matter of preference. Tightly coupling classroom activities with the textbook and assignments
tends to produce a class that enables students with a wide variety of learning styles to flourish and that reinforces learning.
Some students do well, for instance, in reading the text before
the class to prepare questions, while others intentionally read
related text material after a class period to gain a broader perspective on the topic covered. Some, alas, do not read the
assigned textbook at all and a significant fraction of these students perform well in the class nonetheless.
Because there is a limited number of acoustics courses,
and the field is modest in size, the market for textbooks on
acoustics is fairly small. Nonetheless, there are a number of
textbooks on acoustics suitable for undergraduate use. These
texts tend to segregate into two classes: those focused narrowly (as for instance books on speech or noise control) and
those meant to be an introductory survey. Among the books
designed to present a survey of acoustics, it is striking how
similar each is to the others in terms of material coverage and
order of presentation. While it is easy to see how this might
result naturally from writing a book based on ones experiUndergraduate Acoustics Students
29
ence with acoustics, it stifles creativity in the classroom.

Undergraduate acoustics survey textbooks do exist at
differing levels of sophistication. For instance, Raichels The
Science and Applications of Sound 2 is a popular text for college juniors, seniors, and beginning graduate students, while
Rossing et al.s The Science of Sound 3 is less mathematically
intense and thus more appropriate for students below the
junior level. However, it is striking to note what the typical
survey text includes and excludes. For instance, virtually all
of the survey textbooks put a discussion (and derivation) of
the wave equation near the start of the book. This makes
sense from a purely logical view of acoustics, as it allows a
course to start with a discussion of one of the most important
characteristics of soundits propagation as a wave. However,
from the perspective of student engagement (and therefore
learning) it is an unfortunate choice. The wave equation is
mathematically difficult, quite abstract, and hard to directly
relate to applications. Thus, by putting this material in the
very beginning of a course it is difficult to capture and captivate students. The alternative of introducing concrete applications (such as how loudspeakers work) using only qualitative discussions of sound propagation has some clear advantages from the perspective of student interest, and could be
used to motivate a discussion of the wave equation later.
It is also interesting to note that although the topic of
hearing is included in most survey textbooks on acoustics,
few if any mention speech in the same manner. This is very
unfortunate because students are much more accustomed to
and interested in the subfields of acoustics that connect with
them personally. Thus, speech and hearing both are great
topics for engaging students and developing some comfort
with major concepts. Speech is also one of the larger technical areas within acoustics, so ignoring it in survey textbooks
distorts the field.
Similarly, survey textbooks tend to include a chapter on
architectural acoustics but neglect musical acoustics.
(Rossing et al.s book is a notable exception here.) While both
architectural acoustics and musical acoustics are very interesting to students, the typical preoccupation of students with
music suggests that to neglect musical acoustics is to miss a
golden opportunity to capture students where they live. The
music industry, in all of its many aspects, also represents an
enormous market in terms of the money dedicated to it
annually worldwide. While admittedly not all of this market
is related directly to acoustics, enough of the market is
acoustics-related that it is desirable to include musical
acoustics in introductory courses to demonstrate the vibrancy of acoustics and to provide students with a leg-up on
employment should they wish to head in the direction of the
music industry.
An observation about the resources associated with
acoustics textbooks is also in order. Academic publishing is
an important and profitable sector of the book publishing
market. As a result, publishers work hard to get their newest
text into classrooms and to keep it there as long as possible.
Routinely, publishers now create Web sites for textbooks of
popular classes and urge authors to load their text with impressive graphics, associated software (provided with the book on
30
a CD or DVD), example problems worked out in the text, and

vignettes that describe important applications of the concepts.
While many students and faculty might argue that the price
increases for texts do not justify this transition in publishing
style, it is certainly true that new popular textbooks are far
more than the material contained between the covers.
The resource-rich, highly Web-linked and technicallysupported textbook relies on convincing a publisher that the
market is sufficiently large to justify the enormous investment required for its creation. No acoustics textbook has hit
the market with the new resource-rich model (although the
prices of the texts have certainly gone up as though they had),
presumably because the market niche is too small. As a result,
acoustics textbooks simply are not as flashy and appealing as
modern textbooks in subjects that compete for the attention
of students. Further, since this is a purely financial consideration by the book publishers, it is difficult to see how an
author or even a large group of professionals in acoustics
might impact the decision.
Social relevance and applications

A significant amount of research has been done on what
motivates students in science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM) courses. The literature shows it is particularly important to demonstrate the social relevance of the
topic and its interesting applications if one wishes to attract
women and underrepresented minorities.4,5 Further, while
the impact on the majority males is less pronounced, the use
of interesting applications and the focus on social relevance
also helps attract and retain their interest. This research is
having a significant impact on STEM education, albeit at a
slower rate of change than many of us had hoped to see. As
an example, engineering classes are moving from a focus on
cars and aircraft, to applications such as prosthetic devices
that enable people to improve their quality of life.
While the literature on the impact of applications to student engagement and learning does not deal specifically with
acoustics classes, it seems logical that the results should hold
for them. Fortunately, acoustics is a profession that is ripe
with wonderful applications and with exciting issues of social
relevance. However, development of application examples for
a course requires significant work and there is little indication that our acoustics classes (at any level) are exploiting the
hot topics and applications in our profession. For this reason
we mention several acoustic applications and social issues
here that ought to appeal to a broad range of students and
excite them about the possibilities in the field. This is done in
full recognition that merely listing them here is not enough.
Lesson plans and supplemental material for each application
need to be developed.
The obsession of todays students with music has been
mentioned already in this article. More broadly, students
today grew up with MTV and similar video music stations.
They were using computers at a very early age, playing with
various computer games in their youth, and were among the
first to engage routinely in on-line chats and instant messaging. In short, the students in college today grew up multitasking and being actively engaged in the entertainment
industry. Thus, applications of acoustics in the entertainment

industry ought to appeal to students. Entertainment, broadly
cast, provides a strong opportunity for introduction of many
of the technical specialties of acoustics. It is a venue for discussion of speech communication, binaural hearing, signal
processing, transduction, musical acoustics, architectural
acoustics, and other acoustics subdisciplines.
While we never hope for natural and man-made disasters, those that have an acoustical link provide applications
with tremendous appeal to students. Recent examples
include the Indonesian tsunami, the Pakistani earthquake
and the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. Each of these
has an acoustical linkprimarily to wave propagation and to
acoustic listening devices. These events showcase the importance of research in acoustics and emphasize its potential significance in times of challenge. They present acoustics as an
opportunity to do good for the world, rather than in terms
of military applications that students tend to associate with
war and negative actions.6
Another major application area with great potential of
appealing to students is the biomedical arena, largely because
improvements in medicine are likely to have great social significance. Here specific topics such as ultrasound for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes, noise control and speech
privacy in medical facilities, and the treatment of hearing and
speech ailments can serve as interesting applications that
engage students. Many of these topics also make it possible to
examine ethical issues related to them, generally a very good

means of engaging students while enhancing learning, and a
means of fulfilling accreditation requirements in engineering.7 As an example, consider the issue of treatments for profound deafness. While the acoustics technical issue relates to
the design and use of cochlear implants, the controversy
between restoring hearing and living with deafness (and
using sign language) has been in the news frequently and
provides a very interesting opportunity for students to
engage in a discussion of the social issues surrounding technical advancements.
Another category of applications with significant appeal
to a diverse student population deals with environmental
issues. In particular, the danger to ocean animals from noise,
the use of acoustics to determine ocean temperatures with
relevance to global warming, and acoustic refrigeration that
eliminates the need for ozone-depleting chemicals are three
contemporary environmental issues with application to different subdisciplines of acoustics. Further, the potential danger to marine mammals imposed by man-made (anthropogenic) sounds is a topic of significant current controversy,
so this particular application provides an opportunity to discuss how scientists go about resolving such differences.
Exposing students to such a technical controversy can
encourage them to pursue a research career.
Finally, the recent work to develop a classroom acoustics
standard creates a fabulous benchmark by which every
Now you have

a choice
Super-Natural
Plastic Laminates
Natural
Wood Veneer
Whether its the traditional beauty of natural wood. or the unlimited decorator choices of our new durable plastic laminates the possibilities are endless with
Overly Acoustic Doors:
I
I
Traditional wood veneers and decorator colors, plus exotic veneers and custom and opaque colors
Decorator plastic laminates in traditional and exotic simulated wood veneers, plus endless color choices and patterns,
individual designs and custom graphics
Either way, you get the same Overly quality acoustic doors that have higher STC ratings and are lighter weight than most comparable doors on the market.
Plus, many Overly Single Swing Acoustical Wood and Plastic Laminate Doors have been tested to the latest UL fire test standards for 3/4-hour duration.
For more information, please contact:
Overly Door Company
Tel: 1-800-0979-7300, Fax: 1-724-830-2871
Email: overly@overly.com, Web: www.overly.com
31
acoustics student can judge their classroom. This work, with

its direct relevance to student learning, is an extraordinarily
good application to bring into the acoustics class, because it
can be taught at so many different levels. At the simplest
level, it is possible to teach students how to use a sound level
meter and to have them survey a classroom to see if it meets
the background noise level requirement in the standard of
less than 35 dBA. A high school student working with me for
six weeks was given this as a project and managed to survey
the majority of our classrooms. In the course of this work he
found that our newest classroom building nearly met the
background noise level requirement, but there tended to be a
large spike in energy in the 16 kHz octave band. After some
work with the facilities managers, we discovered that the
motion detectors were emitting noise in that band. Although
the instructors and facilities managers could not hear the
high-pitched tone, many of the students could and found it
irritating. As a result of this work, the construction contracts
at Johns Hopkins University have changed to include acoustical requirements. At a higher level of sophistication, one
could clearly have students measure both background noise
and reverberation time and recommend changes to bring the
classrooms into compliance with the classroom acoustics
standard.
Clearly, there are innumerable other examples of applications and social issues that could be brought into an
acoustics classroom. The examples presented above simply
define some of the more obvious classes of acoustics problems that could interest students and be used to reinforce
concepts being presented in class.
Hands-on experiences
In virtually all studies of how people learn, there is a
strong link demonstrated between hands-on experiences and
long-term learning. This is the reason that most science and
engineering programs are loaded with laboratory experiences.
In some scientific fields, it is quite difficult to introduce students to appropriate laboratory experiences. Astronomy courses might suffer from a lack of appropriate telescopes nearby,
for instance, and biology classes might not wish to incur the
expense of maintaining a vivarium to enable student labs dealing with animal anatomy and behavior.
Acoustics is a wonderful field for providing students
with hands-on experiences and active demonstrations.
Indeed the ASA, under the direction of Uwe Hansen, who
served as Chair of the Committee on Education in Acoustics
(2000-06) has provided special sessions for high school students at its biennial conferences as part of its outreach activities. However, lab exercises and active demonstrations have
not been standard components in acoustics classes in the last
decade, primarily because of the resources required to develop themspace, equipment, teaching assistants, and dedicated time of faculty. Admittedly it is difficult to justify the allocation of large amounts of precious resources for classes with
relatively small attendance.
Given the fiscal realities of most universities then, one
might ask what hands-on experiences can be provided in
acoustics without great expense. The answer to this question
32
provides a rich set of opportunities to reinforce the in-class

learning that an undergraduate introductory class in
acoustics might present.
Professional quality equipment in acoustics is expensive
and fragilenot good qualities for student laboratories.
However, much less expensive versions of many common
elements of an acoustics lab are now available, and these can
provide a reasonable hands-on experience for students without breaking the bank. For instance, there are many type 2
sound level meters available on the market that provide various filter networks (such as A-weighting) as a standard and
that come complete with interfaces to a computer so that data
can be downloaded for later analysis. Further, these sound
level meters often can serve as a simple microphone and
amplifier, eliminating the need to purchase additional equipment. Coupled with audio software on a computer, such as
Adobe Audition, the sound level meter thus provides significant laboratory capability. The software, while listed for a
cost comparable to inexpensive type 2 sound level meters, is
usually available for an educational discount that renders it
nearly free.
In addition to the computer and sound level meter, it is
now possible to purchase very inexpensive MP3 players/recorders with built in electret microphones and digital
interfaces, and inexpensive headphones of reasonable quality.
These devices, added to the mix, complete the poor mans
acoustics laboratory. The computer, software, sound level
meter, MP3 player/recorder, and headphones can be purchased
for a total of less than $1000 with educational discounts, and
the space they occupy is hardly more than that needed for a
desktop computer. The sound level meter and MP3 player/recorder are totally portable and powered by batteries.
There are a number of lab experiences possible that use
the computer, software, sound level meter, MP3 player/recorder, and headphones. Many of these measurements
can be conducted by students working on their own, so that
teaching assistance support and faculty-dedicated time are
minimized. For instance, students can find the quietest and
noisiest places on campus simply by using the sound level
meter. They can also consider the spectra and intensity of various noise sources, or estimate the speech intelligibility index
(SII) of a space from the background noise. Students can
measure reverberation time by making a noise (popping the
standard red balloon if available) while recording the sound
on the MP3 player/recorder and then using the computer
audio software to analyze the decay as a function of time. This
method is reminiscent of the one many of us employed in the
past to determine reverberation time using a microphone and
oscilloscope before the advent of modern equipment to automate the process. By introducing various materials into the
room, students can also find the absorption coefficients of
materials. Using two sound level meters, students can record
sounds that are combined in the software to be roughly equivalent to a binaural recording, thus enabling a comparison
between monaural and binaural listening conditions as played
over headphones. One can also engage the same approach to
recording various sounds and asking students to rate them in
terms of annoyance.
The main point of the list of activities above is that it is

possible to introduce meaningful hands-on experiences for
students that span a number of the subdisciplines of acoustics
using only modest equipment. To be sure, it is better still to
have a sound chamber (reverberant and/or anechoic), and
specialized equipment, but even with a very modest budget,
lots can be done. In our case, the only significant addition to
the equipment listed above in the introductory acoustics class
is an artificial ear. One of the measurement assignments asks
students to set their MP3 players to the music type and level
they normally employ. We then use the artificial ear to estimate the sound pressure level at their ears and ask them to
discuss the risk to their hearing from long term listening to
the music. Almost without exception, the students are surprised to learn that they are listening to music far too loudlytypically 85100 dBA.
Pedagogical techniques
The last decade or so has seen a huge expansion in our
understanding of how students learn. With this knowledge,
much of which is summarized in How People Learn8 and How
Students Learn,9 has come a national push to modify how we
teach to correspond better to techniques that foster learning.
Thus, the old approach with a lecture during class time,
weekly bite-sized homework problems, two or three midterm
exams and a final, and a focus on individual accomplishment
rather than team experiences is seen as outdated, ineffective,
and insufficiently supportive of different learning styles.
While STEM courses still use this lecture-style approach the
majority of the time, there are signs that change is happening
in the classroom even in STEM classes.
Most major academic institutions now support classes
through Web-based educational software. Thus, classes are
able to have an Internet component without great cost to
instructors (neither in time nor dollars). As a result, students
at many institutions have come to expect the class to have a
significant online component. At a minimum, the software
normally provides at least two components of interest to students: PowerPoint or other form of course material and a
chat room for those registered in the class. There are those
who argue that putting material presented during class time
on the Web simply encourages students to skip class.
However, the benefits of being able to review the material a
second time are many and the problems of absenteeism can
be dealt with separately (for instance, by taking attendance at
classes and counting attendance toward the final course
grade). The chat room allows students to get to know one
another and to share concerns and approaches to assignments. It can be used as well to share data so that individual
lab reports can include the results from the entire class
instead of the results of a single person or team. A chat room
is also an avenue for students to call attention to information
they have found outside of class that they think might interest the rest of the class. It is thus a type of cooperative learning and fosters the ability to function on multi-disciplinary
teams.7 Acoustics lends itself well to use of an Internet component to enhance and reinforce the class. In particular, most
educational software allows faculty to include audio files on
the class site. These can greatly enhance the material presented during class time by providing more or better demonstrations.
Although technology is a major boon to acoustics classes, there are a number of other aspects of teaching-for-learning that work well with acoustics subject matter. For instance,
students tend to learn material more deeply when they are
presented with open-ended problems rather than a problem
with a single correct answer, because it forces them to think
about answers and justify their choices. Additionally, pedagogical advances encourage greater team experiences so that
students may learn from one another as well as from the
instructor. Acoustics can deal easily with these advances in
pedagogy through use of realistic projects to replace or
enhance homework. Such projects almost always have multiple correct solutions and lots of follow-on work that can be
done. Further, the modern classroom engages students in
more active learning, rather than sitting in a classroom and
being lectured. Discussions in an acoustics class are quite
easy to encourage by bringing in applications of interest.
It is also true that many students in STEM fields are
unaware of the career and graduate school opportunities that
await their completion of an undergraduate degree. For this
reason, many undergraduate programs have developed
courses that bring in speakers who talk about their career history and current employment. Students can be relied upon to
value these speakers, particularly if they are recent graduates
of the program. The use of outside speakers (especially
female and minority speakers) in an acoustic undergraduate
course is a superb way of demonstrating the diversity of
acoustics and of connecting students with potential opportunities in their future. Clearly, not all locales have a strong
acoustics presence, but at a minimum, virtually all locations
have otolaryngologists, sound engineers, speech therapists,
and musicians who could be prevailed upon to speak to a
class of interested students.
Addressing issues of diversity

The engineering workforce is 93% male and 94% majority populations. Unfortunately, the physics workforce is even
less diverse and the lack of diversity in most STEM fields is
reflected in the membership of the ASA that we take to be a
mirror of the acoustics workforce. Clearly there are areas
within acoustics that have greater representation of women
and minority populations, such as speech and physiological
and psychological acoustics, but generally, the acoustics profession has not attracted a widely diverse group of students
reflective of the population at large.
There are a few reasons why we should seek to achieve
greater diversity in the field of acoustics. First, one could
argue that survival of the field requires us to appeal to a
broader audience than we have in the past. Indeed, starting in
2000 preschools in the US have been attended by a majority
of students who would qualify as underrepresented minorities (where underrepresentation specifically refers to STEM
fields). Today, the fastest growing population in the US is
Hispanic, outpacing the growth of African-Americans, and
each of these groups is increasing in size far faster than the
33
traditional Caucasian and Asian-American groups that have

dominated STEM. Unless we find a way to appeal to the
Hispanic and African-American students, we might find it
impossible to replace acousticians who retire and the field
will shrivel. In fact, this is precisely the concern that the Navy
has more broadly. It has found that the majority of its leaders,
particularly in science, are nearing retirement and insufficient numbers of students are interested in replacing them.
Second, there is a strong business case for diversity, i.e.,
data have shown that more diverse companies do far better
than competitors with less diversity. In the STEM fields,
diversity is driven by a number of factorsthe globalization
of business requiring an employee base that is comfortable
and accepted in a wide variety of cultures, the need for a
broad range of perspectives to enhance the critical design
function in products, and the need for more technically
trained graduates to meet the demands of industry.10,11 Thus,
our lack of diversity in the acoustics profession could be hurting the ability of manufacturers to produce products that
appeal to a broad audience.
Third, there is a compelling argument that seeking diversity is the right thing to do. Public education in the US was
established as a public good and it has largely remained the
best route out of poverty for disadvantaged people because
education leads to jobs that pay enough for families to thrive
in some measure of comfort. This is particularly true for education in STEM fields, where salaries tend to be higher than
those in nontechnical areas at all levels. Given that minorities
are disproportionately represented among those considered
disadvantaged, encouraging students from underrepresented
groups to pursue STEM education raises significantly their
hopes of building a comfortable life. Further, it raises the
probability that they will contribute to the economic welfare
of their locale, an issue of importance to everyone living in
that region.
While many in the STEM fields have recognized the
importance of diversity for some time, the problem of attracting and retaining students has proven extremely difficult to
address. Several projects that have produced impressive gains
have been unsustainable without constant attention and dedicated resources. Having considered the projects designed to
achieve a more diverse student body in STEM fields at the
college and university level, we believe that a key problem is
that most focus on infrastructural issues (tutoring, social networks, etc.) rather than the curriculum that forms the core of
the experience for students. Unfortunately, when one considers the curriculum in STEM fields, it is perceived as uninteresting and unappealing, particularly in the first year or two,
when students might not take a single course in their major
department.
We believe that it is possible to impact the recruitment and
retention of students in STEM fields, including acoustics,
through development of a more appealing and appropriate curriculum. Primarily our work on this topic has considered the
total revamping of the undergraduate curriculum in mechanical engineering.12 Our hypothesis is that mechanical engineering will be more attractive to a diverse community if the curriculum is changed to show more connections between technical topics and between technical and nontechnical topics, to
34
focus more on the social aspects and implications of the subject,

to reduce critical path lengths to permit students to transfer
into the major without requiring extra time in school, to introduce greater teaming experiences, and to create an atmosphere
of inclusivity rather than exclusivity. While acoustics is not
identical to mechanical engineering, we believe the same principles hold. It should be possible to attract a more diverse student population to the field through curricular change without
reduction of technical rigor.
The literature points to some successful strategies for
attracting and retaining underrepresented populations in
STEM fields. For instance, women and underrepresented
minorities are far more likely than majority males to choose
a college major that will address issues of cultural and social
importance and lead to improvements in the quality of life
for disadvantaged populations. This suggests the development of new applications for classes that make the relevance
of the field to everyday life clear. Further, the choice of application should reflect some cultural sensitivity to distinctions
between various cultures and ethnic groups. In the US, for
instance, Hispanic and African-American populations are far
more likely than majority populations to be urban dwellers.
They are far less likely than majority populations to own a car
or to fly regularly. Does it make sense, then, to focus applications on cars and airplanes and wonder why the material
does not attract minority students? It is this sort of cultural
sensitivity that led Historically Black Colleges and
Universities (HBCUs) to develop strong music programs
early in their history as a means of appealing to a population
well known for its involvement in music from an early age. In
this sense, we have a wonderful opportunity to capitalize in
acoustics as well, since musical acoustics is a strong part of
the profession. However, there is little evidence that we have
taken advantage of this opportunity to attract greater diversity to acoustics programs.
Entertainment represents one of the most popular professions in the Black and Hispanic communities, yet little has been
done to introduce this population to the technical aspects of
entertainment. Talent is certainly inspirational, but the underlying technologies represent a wealth of opportunities and
should be a motivating factor for continuing studies in STEM.
While there have been great gains in women and minority
students choosing a mathematically rigorous route in high
school, there are still significant gaps between the participation
of women and minorities on one hand, and their male counterparts on the other in such programs. It is possible to interpret
this distinction as proving that women and minorities are less
prepared for STEM higher education. However, one could also
interpret the data as suggesting that STEM ought not to assume
great mathematical knowledge in entering students. Indeed,
although mathematics achievement is often used as an admission criterion for STEM programs, virtually all programs teach
the mathematics required starting with calculus (and make it
possible to take remedial courses in algebra). In considering
undergraduate acoustics courses, this returns us to the earlier
discussion of order of topical presentation in a survey course. By
starting with derivation of the wave equation, arguably the most
mathematically rigorous topic presented, we are sending a message that students without a great mathematical background
need not attend. This inadvertently discourages women and

minorities from acoustics.
As a final comment on diversity issues, we note that
studies have shown that populations tend to see themselves
as minorities if their presence falls below about 20% of the
whole. This is important because the actions of students are
shaped by how they perceive their standing in a class. Thus,
even when acoustics classes are welcoming and without any
evident bias, the mere fact that some students see themselves
as different from the norm can impact their experience negatively. Successful ways to counter this problem seem to correspond to forcing more active participation of students with
one another and with the instructor. Thus, discussions in
class rather than the silent lecture and teaming experiences
on homework assignments and projects are helpful.
A game plan for attracting more students to acoustics

Based on the prior discussion, it is possible to craft a
game plan for making acoustics a more attractive profession
to undergraduate students. We list the key elements of such a
plan below:
1. Create more, earlier, broader elective courses in
acoustics. Particularly at institutions that offer freshman seminars, the lower level acoustics survey class
offers a chance to spark an interest in students from a
wide variety of backgrounds and disciplinary interests. It is an opportunity as well to recruit students
into departments that teach acoustics. At the junior
or senior level, this also permits a series of acoustics
electives to flourish, each of which could be more
focused and rigorous than the earlier course.
2. Develop better, more appealing textbooks. Writing a
textbook is a major undertaking, but the text options
available for survey courses in acoustics are not adequate to the task of recruiting diverse student populations. Authors working together to create an innovative textbook with greater breadth and a nontraditional ordering of subjects could have a major impact
on our field. Further, a group of authors working
together might convince a publisher to dedicate
enough resources to the project to produce something flashy and Web-enabled.
3. Develop application case studies for use in acoustics
classes and make them available online. Although
acoustics has a large and active consulting community, there are few detailed case studies of applications available for use in the classroom. Such case
studies require significant lesson plan development,
but creation of a host of application case studies
online would make it possible to significantly broaden the material presented in acoustics survey classes
and to make it much more connected to student personal experiences and concerns. One could even tailor such classes to the interests of the registered students.
4. Develop a Web site or multiple Web sites that supplement course material. There is currently no central
repository for new acoustics demonstrations, for
projects in acoustics, for connections of common

activities (like downloading music) to acoustics, and
for in-depth discussions of acoustics professions. By
gathering this material together in one or more
maintained Web sites, instructors of classes in
acoustics would have significantly more resources
than they can easily find now. Students and professionals outside of acoustics might also find such a
site interesting as a way to gather information.
Additionally, this could lead to an online and active
job listing that works to list both people seeking
employment in acoustics and companies seeking
employees.
5. Commit to development of a diverse student population interested in acoustics. Making a commitment to
diversity involves changing what we teach and how
we teach in acoustics classes. It also requires committing to regular reviews of progress or lack of progress
in achieving aims through demographic studies.
Many of the items in this game plan are too large to be
accomplished by a single individual and several require the
investment of significant time and money for successful completion. Ideally, what is needed is the activity of a committee of
acoustics professionals actively interested in and engaged by
acoustics education. Such a committee could begin by seeking
seed funding for some demonstration work leading to federally or privately supported additional work (perhaps through
proposals to the National Science Foundation).
Conclusions
The breadth of acoustics is a boon and a curse. The bad
news is that acoustics is neglected at the undergraduate level.
The good news is that the very nature of the discipline lends
itself to a wide variety of appealing and relevant applications
for a diverse student body. Much can be done with hands-on
projects at minimal cost. Acoustic applications are ideal for
realizing desired outcomesmultidisciplinary teamwork,
understanding of ethical responsibility, and the broad education necessary to understand the impact of acoustics in a
global, environmental and societal context.AT
References for further reading:
1
2
3
4
5
6
P. Kuhl and J. Dickey, ASA membership analysis. Acoustical

Society of America (1996).
D. R. Raichel, The Science and Applications of Acoustics
(Springer, New York, 2000).
T. D. Rossing, F. R. Moore, and P. A. Wheeler, The Science of
Sound (Third Edition) (Addison Wesley, San Francisco, 2000).
I. Goodman, Final report of the Womens Experiences in College
Engineering Project (Goodman Research Group, Cambridge,
MA, 2002).
J. Margolis and A. Fisher, Unlocking the clubhouse: Women in
computing (The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002).
J. Grandy, Persistence in science of high-ability minority students: Results of a longitudinal study, J. Higher Education 69(6),
589620 (1998).
Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology,
Engineering Accreditation Commission, Criteria for Accrediting
Engineering Programs (1 November 2004). Retrieved from
www.abet.org
35
J. Bransford, A. Brown, and R. Cocking, Eds., How People Learn:

Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (National Academies Press,
Washington, DC, 2000).
9 M. Donovan, and J. Bransford, eds., How Students Learn.
(National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2005).
10 J. Lucena, Making women and minorities in science and engineering for national purposes in the United States, J. Women
and Minorities in Science and Engineering 6(1), 131 (2000).
11 J. Swearengen, S. Barnes, S. Coe, C. Reinhardt, and K. Subramanian,
Ilene J. Busch-Vishniac is a
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
at Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore, Maryland where, from
19982003 she served as the sixth
dean of the Whiting School of
Engineering.
Dr. Busch-Vishniac received her
undergraduate degrees in Physics
and Mathematics from The
University of Rochester, and M.S. and
Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical
Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She worked at Bell Laboratories in the Acoustics Research
Department before joining the Mechanical Engineering faculty of The University of Texas in 1981. She remained at The
University of Texas until 1998, when she joined Johns
Hopkins University as Professor and Dean.
Dr. Busch-Vishniac has received many teaching and
research awards, including the Achievement Award of the
Society of Women Engineers, the Curtis McGraw Research
Award of the American Society for Engineering Education,
and the Silver Medal in Engineering Acoustics of the
Acoustical Society of America. She has served in various
professional organizations including a term as President of
the Acoustical Society of America, and a term on the
Engineering Deans Council of the American Society of
Engineering Education. She has authored roughly 60 technical articles and one book, and holds 9 US patents on electromechanical sensors.
Dr. Busch-Vishniac is married to astrophysicist Ethan
Vishniac. They have two children, Cady and Miriam. Two
shaggy dogs complete the domestic picture.
James E. West is currently a Research Professor at Johns
Hopkins University, Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering (2002). He was formally a Bell Laboratories
Fellow, at Lucent Technologies.
36
12
Globalization and the undergraduate manufacturing engineering

curriculum, J. Engineering Education 91(2), 255261 (2002).
I. Busch-Vishniac and J. Jarosz, Can Diversity in the
Undergraduate Engineering Population be Enhanced through
Curricular Change?, J. Women and Minorities in Science and
Engineering 10(3), 255281 (2004).
His pioneering research on

charge storage and transport in polymers (the electrical analogy of a permanent magnet) led to the development of electret transducers for sound
recording and voice communication.
Almost 90% of all microphones built
today are based on the principles first
published in the early 1960s. This simple but rugged transducer is the heart
of most new telephones and can be
found in most microphone applications from toys to professional equipment.
West holds more than 50 U.S. and about 200 foreign
patents on various microphones and techniques for making
polymer electrets and transducers. He was inducted into The
National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1999 for the invention of
the electret microphone.
West is a member of the National Academy of
Engineering; an Acoustical Society of America (ASA) Fellow
and past President, and past member of ASAs Executive
Council (1998-2001). He is also a Fellow of the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
West is a member of the Board of Directors of The National
Inventors Hall of Fame, a member of the National Academy of
Engineering Committee on Diversity in the Engineering
Workforce, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee
of The International Symposium on Electrets.
West is a recipient of the ASAs Silver Medal in
Engineering Acoustics (1995), and was awarded an honorary
Doctor of Science degree from the New Jersey Institute of
Technology (1997). In 2002 he was the Audio Engineering
Society Richard C. Heyser Memorial Lecturer. West was
awarded the JOHN WILLIAM STRUTT, 3rd Baron of
Raleigh 2003 Award, presented by the Mexican Institute of
Acoustics, the Acoustical Society of Americas Gold Medal
(2006), and an honorary Doctor of Engineering from
Michigan State University (2006).
ANTONIO MEUCCI, THE SPEAKING TELEGRAPH,

AND THE FIRST TELEPHONE
Angelo J. Campanella
Campanella Associates
Columbus, Ohio 43026
ntonio Meucci (Fig. 1) was born in
word, not distinct, a murmur, an inarticulate
1808 in San Frediano near Florence,
sound. This test was repeated several times
Italy. He attended the Academy of Fine
that day, and several times on days thereafter.
Arts in Florence and studied mechanical arts,
In his words: From those moments on, I recchemistry, and physics including electrology.
ognized that I had attained the transmission
In 1833 he became assistant chief mechaniof human words by means of a wire conduccian of Teatro della Pergola in Florence, where
tor with a battery of electrical cells, and so
he built a stage house air-tube intercom. His
named it the Speaking Telegraph.
involvement in Risorgimento (Italian reunifiAfter 1847 public attendance at the Teatro
cation) landed him in jail for a time after
Tacon diminished, and the owner was considwhich he married stage costumer Ester
ering closing it permanently. From 1847 to
Mochi. They left Florence in 1835 with the
1852 the Havana Opera Company engaged in
Italian Opera Company troupe bound for
tours to Charleston, Philadelphia, New York,
Havanas Teatro de Tacon where Antonio
and Boston. Since Meuccis contract with the
Fig. 1. Antonio Meucci (1885).
became the principal mechanician.
Teatro Tacon was expiring, his friends suggestDuring the period 1842 to 1844, Meucci read treatises on
ed that he should move from Cuba, where venture capital was
galvinoplastics (electroplating) and galvanism by Becquerel,
invested only into sugar production, to the United States where
Jacobi, Mesmer and others. At about that same time, he
business opportunities for his inventions should be better.
obtained a contract to electroplate army supplies, acquiring a
Other reasons for leaving Havana were that the local authorities
bank of 60 Bunsen electrical wet cells.
were suspicious of his support of separatist activities and that he
In18491850 Meucci became interested in electrotherawas a member of the Mason Lodge. By early 1850 he was conpy and collaborated with a local doctor using the Bunsen
vinced to make the move and the Meucci family made travel
cells. He had already applied some electrotherapy to his wife
plans to accompany the Havana Opera Company on their next
who was developing arthritis. Meuccis method was comU.S. tour.
prised of two cork insulated metal contacts (Fig. 2-1)1 wired
They sailed to New York in April 1850 on the frigate Norma
to and from a battery room, where the cells could be conbringing with them Antonios laboratory supplies and their life
nected in series to apply any voltage up to 114 volts DC,
savings of twenty-six thousand pesos fuertes (about $500,000
though lesser voltage with fewer cells was usually sufficient
today). Antonio planned to continue his experiments and to
for effective therapy. One contact was to be held in a patients
develop and sell his chemical and electrical discoveries, despite
left hand, while the second was to be placed wherever the
his lack of knowledge of the English language, so vital in navigataffliction might be on the patients body. To treat a migraine
headache, for example, a patient would place the second contact in his mouth when Meucci called out commands from
three rooms away where the Bunsen cells were located. He
could connect any number of cells in series with the wires to
and from the patient as well as to connect himself to the
device as a monitor. Details of this event were later recorded during the Globe trial of the 1880s at which Meucci submitted an affidavit as well as trial testimony. In his (translated) words; I held a similar instrument in my left hand. As
soon as the person placed the contact on his lip, he received
a discharge and shouted out. At the same time, I thought I
heard this sound more distinctly than natural. I then put the
copper of my instrument to my ear and heard the sound of
his voice through the wire.
To continue testing his discovery Meucci added a cardboard baga funnelaround each copper contact to avoid
Fig. 2-2. Phone used for transmitting
Fig. 2-1. Phone used for transmitting
injury by flesh contact (See Fig. 2-2). Meucci testified that he
and receiving. (New York Public
and receiving; a is metal contact; b
ordered the sick person to speak freely into the funnel, relating
Library)
is handle; and c is wires going
that He put the funnel to his mouth, and I put mine to my ear.
through the handle. (New York Public
Library)
At each moment that said individual spoke, I heard sound of a
Antonio Meucci
37
Fig. 2-3. Electrostatic phone used for transmitting and receiving. (New York Public
Library)
Fig. 2-3x. First electromagnetic phone

instrument. (New York Public Library)
Fig. 2-4. Phone used for transmitting and receiving. (New

York Public Library)
ing the complex New York business and financial worlds.

mal diaphragms with a central metal valve and a metallic
Alexander Graham Bell was but two years old when
diaphragm set very close to the magnet. In 1856, he switched
Antonio Meucci arrived in the United States in 1850. The
to a horseshoe magnet with a helical winding (Fig. 3-1, 1856),
Meuccis settled on Staten Island and bought a house that
then back to a magnetized steel bar powered by a bobbin of
stands today as the Garibaldi-Meucci Museum on Tompkins
wire (Fig. 3-2, 1859).
Street. Giuseppe Garibaldi, later hero of the Italian
In 18571858, apparently ready to move forward with
Risorgmento came to live with Meucci between campaigns.
his invention, he asked New York artist Nestore Corradi to
He encouraged Meucci to employ other exiles to make stearic
make a drawing from his sketch showing a man in a sitting
candles based on Meuccis original chemical compounds that
position holding in his hands two small apparatuses of conpredated those of Proctor & Gamble.
cave form, attached to electric wires to be used one by the
When Ester Meuccis arthritis confined her to her third
mouth in order to speak into it, the other to be placed to the
floor bedroom, Antonio improved on his Speaking Telegraph
ear to receive sounds of the human voice, so constituting a
(2-3, 2-3x), installing an intercom from there to his laboratospeaking telegraph that he called a telephone.3 In 1860,
Meucci wrote an article for publication in LEco dItalia in
ries near the kitchen and in their yard. Following Galileos
New York detailing his Speaking Telegraph. Meucci asked
teaching to provando e reprovando (try and try again), he
acquaintance, Enrico Bendelari, who was planning to spend
experimented with diaphragms of animal material and of
some time in Naples on business, to seek an Italian backer
metal, first located above, then below, a metal tongue,2 with
wire windings on a tube filled with steel filings or a metal rod,
there since Naples already had an extensive telegraph netboth magnetized with a loadstone. He found them all to react
work. Meucci either gave Bendelari copies of his LEco article,
with the noise of the word, resulting in successive instruor sent them to him later. By then Garibaldi had liberated
ments. See Figs. 2-3, 2-3x and 2-4 (1853). In 1852 he contactNaples. The ruling Bourbon regime was failing, and backers
ed the manufacturers of Morse telegraph equipmentthen in
who Bendelari approached were reluctant to proceed due to
widespread useto inquire where he could purchase materials
the evolving political situation in that region.
and was referred to a Mr. Chester who lived on Centre Street.
During the 1850s the Meuccis obtained ownership of the
In 1854Iobtained bobbins and other utensils from Mr.
land adjacent to their cottage, and Antonio became a U.S. citiChesterhe (Chester) showed me all the things necessary
zen in 1854. But he then dissipated their savings in poor busiused then in the telegraphic artmy memory was opened to
ness decisions and speculative chemical ventures including a
build some new instrumentsafter
candle factory and a brewery. Between
some reflection, I constructed a first
In 1872, Meucci reproduced 1858 and 1862 the Meuccis land was sold
instrument.
at public auction, but they were permitThe Instrument (1854) used a magted to live in the cottage indefinitely. In
a pair of his teletrofono
netized rod, with a diaphragm (see Fig.
December 1859 he wrote to his dear
2-4) with a strange hole and a metallic from left over parts and parts friend Garibaldi, now on campaign in
tongue which he thought necessary to
Italy, I have reduced myself to working
produce a voice signal. Meucci cited a
like a garzone to $15 to the week, shame
he could afford to buy and
platinum metal tongue, now known to be
for me.4 Kerosene from Pennsylvania
petroleum oil was discovered in 1859 and
a slightly ferromagnetic material when
gave them to Grant, who
it diminished the candle business. His
containing a nickel impurity. The sound
1860 candle patent only brought him the
receiver/transmitter he developed was in
did not seem to know the
opportunity to work for William Rider
essence a reversible variable reluctance
transceiver. He varied between using animerit of these instruments. (New York Parafinne Candle Co.), to
38
Fig. 3-1. Phone used for transmitting and receiving.

(New York Public Library)
encouraged in 1865 to make better

records of his telephone experiments
which he recorded in a bound memorandum book given to him by Mr.
Rider5 from the Rider & Clark office on
Broad Street in Manhattan, where his
candles had been merchandised.
Meuccis fortunes turned decidedly
for the worse on the ferry steamer
Westfield on 30 July 1871 en route from
Manhattan to Staten Island when its
boiler burst, killing many people on
board. Meucci was seriously scalded
and his convalescence exhausted his
finances in the post-Civil War depression. During that decade, Meucci and
his invalid wife lived a frugal existence.
They were given charity by their
friends and coal, groceries, and a dollar

a week by the Supervisor of the Poor of
Staten Island as late as 1880.
His next effort was to form an
agreement, validated by a notary on 12
December 1871, founding the
Teletrofono Company in partnership
with acquaintances Italian Consulate
Secretary A. Z. Grandi, contractor A.
A. Tremeschin and cigar stand operator S. G. P. Breguglia. That agreement
predated by four years an analogous
February 1875 agreement between
Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas
Sanders and Gardiner Hubbard. The
U.S. Patent office Caveat, an
announcement without drawings of
intent to patent for fee of $10, had


Fig. 4. Phone used for transmitting and receiving.

whom he had assigned the patent.

Meucci also obtained patents on a bright
kerosene lamp (1862), paint oils from
kerosene (1863), paper pulp from wood
and/or vegetables (1865), wicks from
vegetables (1865) and a vitamin drink
(1871), a meat sauce (1873) and a
Lactometer (1875) that predated the
Babcock test by 15 years. He was
Fig. 5. Certificate verifying the 1871 Caveat11. (National Records Administration, New England Division)
Antonio Meucci
39
become available in July 1870. On 28 December 1871,

Meucci filed a one-year Caveat on his Sound Telegraph,
requiring a $10 fee plus another $10 for the lawyers effort. A
full patent including the attorneys fee and drawings would
cost $250 that his partners would not offer to Meucci. Figure
5 is a photocopy of an 1887 certificate testifying to the existence, date and number (3335) of that Caveat.7 Figure 6 is an
1880s recreation of the 1859 Corradi drawing,8 the original
of which could have been submitted with an 1871 patent
application, were it to have been filed then. Figures 7-8 are
photocopies of the first and last pages of the Caveat on display at the Garibaldi-Meucci Museum9 possibly the copy
referenced in the Certificate. Within the Caveat text, it is
clear that Meucci had a clear vision of the system necessary
for two-way vocal communication across considerable distances, including the need for quiet.
Since two of his partners left New York in less than a year,
Meucci approached Edward B. Grant of the American District
Telegraph Company in New York in 1872 with a request that
his teletrofono be tested on that companys telegraph lines.
Meucci explained that his July 1871 injuries had confined him
to bed, near death at times, and that his wife sold most of his
electrical instruments for money to pay medical expenses and
for the necessities of life. Grant said that he would, in Meuccis
words put at my disposal the telegraph lines needed, provided I would bring in an exact explanation of the mode of operation of the affair, and some drawings, and also some instruments to speak.10 Meucci reproduced a pair of his teletrofono from left over parts and others that he could afford to
buy and gave them to Grant, who did not seem to know the
merit of these instruments.
Enter Western Union electricians Frank L. Pope and
George Prescott, and Franks brother, Henry Pope, a superintendent in the American District Telegraph Company which
was a contractor to Western Union. What happened after 1872
is still a matter of speculation. Frank had the duty11 to
examine the novelty and utility of the various new inventions
relating to telegraphy, which were constantly being presented
to the officers of these companies (Western Union and the old
Stock Telegraph Co.) for approval or adoption. George on the
other hand had to act as a barrier to a flood of inventions
brought to the company for attention.12 Two years passed during which time nothing was reported to Meucci. In 1874,
Meucci demanded restitution of the descriptions and given
designs,14 to which Grant replied that he had mislaid them.
Lacking even the $10 to renew the Caveat, Meucci allowed it to
lapse on 28 December 1874.
According to sworn depositions, it was not until 1877
that Henry brought some Bell instruments that were
placed in the hands of the American District Telegraph
Company for I dont know what purpose to Franks house for
testing on a telegraph line between the brothers homes. The
instruments are said to have worked well, and they spent
two or three hours talking.11,12
Alexander Graham Bell recalled in a 1922 National
Geographic article13 that in the 1860s, in addition to formal
schooling in Scotland, he observed his father and grandfather
in their physiological experiments on speech utterances and
vibrations and in the teaching of deaf students to produce
40
H. Res. 269
In the House of Representatives, U.S.,
June 11, 2002.
Whereas Antonio Meucci, the great Italian inventor,
had a career that was both extraordinary and tragic;
Whereas, upon immigrating to New York, Meucci
continued to work with ceaseless vigor on a project he
had begun in Havana, Cuba, an invention he later called
the teletrofono, involving electronic communications;
Whereas Meucci set up a rudimentary communications link in his Staten Island home that connected the
basement with the first floor, and later, when his wife
began to suffer from crippling arthritis, he created a permanent link between his lab and his wife's second floor
bedroom;
Whereas, having exhausted most of his life's savings
in pursuing his work, Meucci was unable to commercialize his invention, though he demonstrated his invention
in 1860 and had a description of it published in New
York's Italian language newspaper;
Whereas Meucci never learned English well enough
to navigate the complex American business community;
Whereas Meucci was unable to raise sufficient funds
to pay his way through the patent application process,
and thus had to settle for a caveat, a one year renewable
notice of an impending patent, which was first filed on
December 28, 1871;
Whereas Meucci later learned that the Western
Union affiliate laboratory reportedly lost his working
models, and Meucci, who at this point was living on public assistance, was unable to renew the caveat after 1874;
Whereas in March 1876, Alexander Graham Bell,
who conducted experiments in the same laboratory
where Meucci's materials had been stored, was granted a
patent and was thereafter credited with inventing the
telephone;
Whereas on January 13, 1887, the Government of the
United States moved to annul the patent issued to Bell on
the grounds of fraud and misrepresentation, a case that
the Supreme Court found viable and remanded for trial;
Whereas Meucci died in October 1889, the Bell
patent expired in January 1893, and the case was discontinued as moot without ever reaching the underlying
issue of the true inventor of the telephone entitled to the
patent; and
Whereas if Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee
to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have
been issued to Bell: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of
Representatives that the life and achievements of Antonio
Meucci should be recognized, and his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged.
Attest:
Clerk.
Fig. 6. Corradis 1883 recreation of the drawing that he furnished Meucci in 1858. (Garibaldi-Meucci Museum)
sounds with their vocal organs. Bell became aware of

Helmholtzs works on tone sounds with an electric tuning
fork, and those of Wheatstone who had reconstructed a
speaking machine suggested by Baron von Kempelen.
Alexander and his brother, Melville, attempted to build the
same device from artificial vocal cords driven by the wind
chest of their parlor organ. Later they caused a dog to produce words by their manipulation of the dogs mouth and
throat. In Scotland and in London, as of age 18 (circa 1864),
Bell was unaware of electricity and magnetism. Then he
immigrated to Boston, Massachusetts to eventually become a
professor of vocal physiology at Boston University. While in
America, Bell undertook the study of electricity.
Bells quoted recollection of the foundation for his invention was only my crude telephone of 18741876.13 Review
of the facts now known of that time indicates that Bells
device would have been created while teaching at Boston
University and despite urgings from his associates Messrs.
Saunders and Hubbard that multiple telegraphy (transmission of several simultaneous telegraph messages over a single
wire line) would have much greater monetary value. Bell had
made it known in October 1874 of his intent to patent a telephone.14 Bell then used the New York facilities of Western
Union in March, April and May 1875 for his telephone experiments. Bell was assisted by Henry Pope and George Prescott.
In May1875 Bell announced the addition of variable resistance to his initial telephone conception. Bell signed his
Improvement in Telegraphy patent application on 30
January 1876, which included causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of air accompanying
said vocal or other sound

Both Elisha Gray, an inventor who was also working on
a telephone with a liquid microphone invention unbeknownst to Bell, and Bell both filed applications on February
14, 1876. Grays was for a Caveat, while Gardiner Hubbards
lawyers filed a patent on behalf of Bell. On March 7, 1876
Patent #174,465 was issued to Alexander Graham Bell for his
Improvement in Telegraphy, aimed at performing multiple
message telegraphy. Here, an armature moving near the pole
of a small electromagnet produced an undulating current.
Bell also cited another modewhere motion to the armature (is) by the human voice or musical instrument and a
corresponding claim. On March 10, 1876 Bell demonstrated
converting words into electrical current using the variableliquid resistance documented in a second patent.15 His assistant, in an adjoining room in Boston, heard Bell say over the
experimental device the soon-to-be-famous words: Mr.
Watson, come here, I want to see you.
After learning that Bell was granted the March 1876
patent on the transmission of voice over wires, Meucci
demanded his priority in the matter. Technically this was
possible on the basis of Meuccis 1871 Caveat, renewed for a
total of three years through 28 December1874 while Bell, as
he later declared under oath, had his first idea of the (electromagnetic) telephone the summer of 1874. Years later,
Meuccis precedence would be based on the fact that Bells
patent did not constitute new and useful art not before
known or used in this country, and not patented or described
in one whichever printed publication, in this or other countries,
and that has not been publicly used or sold for more than two
Antonio Meucci
41
years from the date in question.

On June 25, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated
his telephone at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.
The Bell Telephone Company was formed in 1877. On March
13, 1879, New England Telephone and Bell Telephone merged
to become the National Bell Telephone Co. On April 17, 1880,
National Bell reached a settlement with Western Union and
became the American Bell Telephone Company. In March
1885 American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) was incorporated as a subsidiary of Bell Telephone to build and operate
a long distance telephone network.
Meucci increased his efforts to capitalize on his rightful
invention. After 1880, there were widespread complaints of
poor service by the Bell Company. With the aid of Meucci, a
syndicate was formed in 1883 and named the Globe Telephone
Company. Globe (was) formed for the purpose of carrying
on some part of its business out of the State of New York and
the names of the town and county in which the principal part
of the business of said Company within this State is to be transacted are the City and County of New York. Using Meuccis
inventions as the basis, Globe planned to build and sell Meucci
telephones to that market as well as wire, switchboards,
insulators, etc., at low rates. Globe apparently paid Meucci a
salary of $150/month until 1886.
Globe had by then obtained Meuccis rights and inven-
Fig. 7. First text page of the 1871 Caveat. (Garibaldi-Meucci Museum)

42
tions. They secured evidence that they believed would convince (at the proper time) the highest court in the U.S. of the
truthfulness of the statements made in a Complaint filed with
the U.S. Justice Department by Globe late in 1885. That
Complaint disputed the Bell patents on the basis that the
Meucci Caveat filed five years prior to Bell had rendered the
Bell Patents as worthless. The ensuing trial led to the Meucci
deposition and exhibits supporting his prior discoveries and
inventions. The case was heard in U.S. Federal Court during
which affidavits by many people from Staten Island and New
York attested to the existence of and experience speaking
with the Meucci telephone instruments. Bell then sued Globe
for infringement in the Southern District Court of New York,
presided by Judge William James Wallace. The belabored testimony by Meucci was in Italian, translated to English, then frequently misinterpreted and challenged by the testimony of
Charles R. Cross, a Professor-Engineer from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. In the end, Judge Wallace ruled in favor
of Bell, accepting Professor Crosss interpretations, declaring in
his judgment brief that that Meuccis devices were little more
than a toy string telephone.
For the 1880s trials, exhaustive searches by all parties to
find a copy of the Meucci telephone article in LEco and related information failed. In 1880 the Globe Company offered a
$100 reward for all the numbers of the Eco dItalia which
speak of the telephone of Mr. Meucci from 1859 to 1862. In
1885, the private collection of LEco owned by Dr. John
Citarotto of New Orleans was sold to the Bell Company for
$125. There were many issues missing from that 18571881
collection, especially those from 1859 to 1863. To this day,
copies of LEco dItalia from and including December 1860, all
of 1861, 1862 and 1863 have not been found.
Details about Meucci emerged during the 1886 trial
where the defendant, Globe Telephone Company, was being
sued by Bell Telephone Company for patent infringement. A
214 page deposition by 77 year old Meucci contained a
description of twelve of his 30-odd telephone devices created
between 1849 and 1865 (Fig. 2-1 through Fig. 4). When
asked at one point in cross-examination What business did
you undertake after you gave up the candle factory? his
answer was Nothing; what I have done all my lifeexperiments. (It was within these and other obscure but detailed
records in clear Italian and English, including an English
translation of his memorandum book for another trial,3
where conclusive proof that Meucci had priority in the invention of the telephone was discovered.)
There followed over several years a series of complaints
by Meucci et al. against Bell, and demurs by the U.S.
Government,16 ending with case abandonment in 1897; it had
by then become moot since Bells questioned 1876 patent
would expire in 1893. Antonio died in October 18, 1889 on
Staten Island.
Overall, the U.S. Government actions in response to
Meuccis claims were: March 1886Bill of complaints in
Southern Ohio; December 1886Ohio Case dismissed; January
1887Bill of Complaints filed in Massachusetts; Judges sustain
demurer by Bell lawyers; November 1887Government appeals
to Supreme Court; November, 1888Supreme Court reverses
verdict, rejects demurer and remands the case for trial;
Fig. 8. Last text page of the 1871 Caveat. (Garibaldi-Meucci Museum)
November 1897The U.S. Supreme Court trial was closed by

consent as moot. In all, some 18,000 pages of testimony and
informationnever formally publishedresulted from these trials which were held over a 12-year period. Neither Bell nor the
Bell Telephone Company ever won any of these trials. Much of
this information is still available in major libraries throughout
the U.S. 7, 8
In H. A. Fredericks paper on microphone development
that was published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of
America in 1931,17 Meucci was not mentioned along with the
19th century works of Reiss, Dolbear, Blake, Drawbaugh and
others because Meucci never developed a variable resistance
transmitter, later called a microphone. It was not until 1933
that Guglielmo Marconi, Father of the Radio, in celebrating
contributions to communications at the World exhibition in
Chicago, displayed models of Meuccis 1857 and 1867 earpiece-transmitters.5 These were constructed like illustrations
in Figs. 2-2 and 2-4, but with a handle. Marconi had commissioned the Galileo Workshops in Florence, Italy to construct four telephone pairs from Meuccis notes and sketches
(Fig. 9). One pair remained at the Museum of Science and
Industry in Chicago, another in the National Science
Museum in Milan, Italy, a third in the SIRTI
Telecommunications Museum. Photographs of a pair of these

handsets as well as models of earlier Meucci instruments and
a rare copy of the famous Caveat are on exhibit at the
Garibaldi-Meucci Museum.
Giovanni Schiavo published research on these matters in
his 1958 book1 on Antonio Meucci. In 1998, an Italian
telecommunications engineer Basilio Catania,8, 18 noticed a
newspaper article about Antonio Meucci that claimed that he
invented a Sound Telegraph before 1870. He found articles
about Meucci in his companys library, and more unpublished
information about Meucci in libraries in Florence and Rome.
Catania began serious research about Meucci upon his retirement in 1990 through a grant from his employer and visited
Havana, Washington, Staten Island, and Bayonne, New Jersey.
He found historical trial documents at the U.S. National
archives and New York and New England archives. It was not
until 1994 that he identified convincing evidence of Meuccis
inventive priorities in a 1885 translation of Meuccis laboratory memorandum book by Michael Lemmi,6 a New York attorney and acquaintance of Meucci.
Most convincing was a sketch created by Meucci about
his telephone test wiring in 1862 that showed a large wire coil
midway along a long transmission line. Meucci had testified
that this coil made long distance voice reproduction stronger
and clearer.19 This phenomenon, inductive loading, was
rediscovered by Pupin some 30 years later; 18 years after the
1883 trial. In all, there were four noteworthy discoveries or
observations by Meucci: (1) That inductive loading of long
transmission lines will increase the strength and clearness of
the voice Memorandum Book page 35, 1870 (patented by
Pupin in 1900), (2) That thicker wires and preferably multiple copper wires wrapped in cotton or paper for insulation
were needed to transmit the voice more clearly (realized
today as the measure required to counteract the rise in wire
resistance to high frequency currents via the skin effect)
and to obtain a distance of about one mile,19 Memorandum
Book, August 1870; (3) There is need for quiet isolation when
listening to the transmitted voice; (4) That an anti-side tone
circuit is feasible, where a talker does not have to listen to his
own voice, and is represented by the second and separate
transmission wire in Corradis drawing, Fig. 6. Discoveries 2
and 3 above were quoted in his 1871 Caveat. Discovery 3 is
linked to the hidden benefit of the telephone; that confidential privacy is assured since no one else can see or hear the
messages transmitted; an advantage overlooked by most or
all 1860-1875 financial backers.
Catania presented a lecture on Meucci at New York
University in 2000.20 Peter Vallone, then Speaker of the New
York City Council, learned of this lecture and introduced
City Council resolution No. 1556, to recognize the priority
of Meuccis invention of the telephone that passed unanimously. Representative Eliot Engel, from New York then
introduced U.S. House Resolution No. 269 to acknowledge
Meucci as the true inventor of the telephone. On June 11,
2002, Jo Ann Davis of Virginia moved to suspend the house
rules and agree to Resolution 269. After commemorating
statements of several other representatives, H269 was passed
with a two-thirds majority.21
In Catanias words This Florentine takes his place
Antonio Meucci
43
Fig. 9. Marconis reconstruction of Meuccis 185767 Telephone. (Photo by

Maurizio Ghisellini for Basilio Cantania in the early 1990s).
among others such as Dante, Michaelangelo, Galileo,

Lorenzo Ghiberti and Machiavelli. In Jo Ann Daviss words;
Meucci should be remembered with other innovators, like
Edison, the Wright Brothers, and Marconi whose vision and
tenacity changed our lives for the better.AT
Endnotes:
Figure 1 is a photo of Antonio Meucci by L. Alman. The
orginal is in the Museo del Risorgimento, Milan, Italy.
Since the initial phono-electric effect was first discovered
in Havana by accident in 1849, Cuban authorities can claim
Havana to be the birthplace of telephony.
In 1881, after the cottage lot was sold to a brewery that

had already bought the adjacent lots, the cottage was moved
to the easterly side of Forest Street, keeping its orientation
unchanged. Later, around 1905 it was moved again to its
present location at the corner of Chestnut Avenue and
Tompkins Street.24 The Order of the Sons of Italy in America
now maintains the Garibaldi-Meucci Museum at 420
Tompkins Street, Staten Island, NY 10305. See
http://www.garibaldimeuccimuseum.org/.
A detailed obituary of Antonio Meucci was published in
the Baltimore Sun on 19 October 1889.
American historian-writer Giovanni Schiavo1 documented
Meuccis life in 1958. Basilio Catania, a retired Italian telecommunications engineer, performed in-depth research18, 23 from
1989 to 2002, on Meuccis works. Details from the works of both
these authors were used as the foundation of this article.
A few copies of Schiavos book on Meucci might be
found for sale on the internet. Schiavo's collected works as
well as a collection on Meucci may be found at the American
Italian Museum and Research Library in New Orleans
(www.airf.org).
Catania has available a CD18 with all his data, document
copies and his presentations in English, Italian and Spanish.
He has also published a fascinating biography of Antonio
Meucci in three phases; Florence, Havana, and New York
with comments on the scientific knowledge and social conditions of those times.24

1
2
44
Giovanni Schiavo, Antonio Meucci, Inventor of the telephone, (The

Vigo Press, New York, 1958).
Deposition of Antonio Meucci, rendered Dec. 7, 1885Jan. 13, 1886,
National Archives and Records Administration, Northeast Region,
New York, NY. Records of the U.S. Circuit Court for the Southern
District of New York. The American Bell Telephone Co. et al. vs. The
Globe Telephone Co. et al. Also Deposition of Antonio Meucci,
New York Public Library (Annex), Answers 1417 and Meucci deposition of 11 September 1886, answers 626630.
Affidavit of Antonio Meucci, sworn Oct. 9, 1885, National Archives
and Records Administration, Northeast Region, New York, NY.
Records of the US Circuit Court for the Southern District of New
York. The American Bell Telephone Co. et al. vs. The Globe
Telephone Co. et al. Deposition of Antonio Meucci, Defendants
Exhibit No. 120. Also Deposition of Antonio Meucci, New York
Public Library (Annex), Part 2, pp. 1032.
Basilio Catania, www.comunicazioni.it, extract from a 26
December 1859 letter to Garibaldi from Meucci, computer translation into English.
B. Catania, Antonio Meuccis TeletrofonoThe True Story Behind
the Invention of the Telephone, Accenti, The Canadian Magazine
with an Italian Accent 1(3), 1628 (JulyAugust 2003). Also reproduced in Puglia Review (Canada) V(4), Winter 2003; Vol. VI(2),
68, 17, 3032 (Summer 2004). See also Ref. 2, 11 September 1886
deposition answer #3.
Affidavit of Michael Lemmi (Translation of Meuccis Memorandum
book), sworn Sept. 28, 1885, National Archives and Records
Administration, College Park, MDRG60, Year Files Enclosures
18856921, Box 10, Folder 1, 230/3/46/6 (originally filed at the
Interior Department file 45131885, Enclosure 2).
A. Meucci, Sound Telegraph, U.S. Pat. Off. Caveat No. 3335, filed
Dec. 28, 1871; renewed Dec. 9, 1872; Dec. 15, 1873. File wrapper
kept at the National Archives and Records Administration, College
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Park, MD (USA) RG60, File 69211885, Box 10 (or

MassachusettsBox 137), Folder. Also Deposition of Antonio
Meucci (Defendants Exhibits No. 111, 122 & 123), Part 2, pp. 19,
New York Public Library. Also Deposition of Thomas D. Stetson
(Defendants Exhibit 141 1/2), Records of the U.S. Circuit Court for
the Southern District of New York, American Bell Telephone Co.
et al. vs. Globe Telephone Co. et al., National Archives and
Records Administration, Northeast Region, New York, NY. Also
Records of the Circuit Court of the United States, District of
Massachusetts, United States of America vs. American Bell
Telephone Co. and Alexander Graham Bell, Exhibit from
Defendants, National Archives and Record AdministrationNew
England Region, 380 Trapelo Road, Waltham, MA (USA)
Caveat as recorded in the Records of the Supreme Court. Possibly
referenced by [5]. Reproduced with the permission of the
GaribaldiMeucci Museum.
Meucci testimony, Bell vs. Globe, Answer #94. See Ref. 1
Ref. 5, answer 94.
Ref, 1, p. 166168.
Ref. 1, p 180.
Alexander Graham Bell, Prehistoric Telephone Days, National
Geographic Magazine XLI(3) (March 1922).
Edwin Grosvenor and Morgan Wesson, Alexander Graham Bell,
The Life and Times of the Man Who Invented the Telephone
relates that in Oct, 1874 Alexander Graham Bell stated his basic
idea for the telephone.
A. G. Bell, Improvement in Telegraphy, U.S. Patent No.174465, filed
Feb. 14, 1876, granted Mar. 7, 1876, USPTO. A. G. Bell,
Improvement in Electric Telegraphy, U.S. Patent No. 186787, filed
Jan. 15, 1877, granted Jan. 30, 1877, USPTO.
See Ref. 18, 2003c_Toronto_Univ.ppt. US/Bell (1) and
Bell/Globe (2). Articles on the MeucciGlobe trials appeared in

the 9 November, 1885 Chicago Tribune (under (Telephone
Patents), and the December, 1885 Scientific American, Meuccis
Claims to the Telephone (see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/
13401/13401-h/13401-h.htm#13).
17 H. A. Frederick, Development of the microphone, J. Acoust. Soc.
Am. 3(1), 130 (1931).
18 B. Catania, Meucci Twin CD, Available on request.
19 Ref. 19, Fig. 2 and ref. 19, August 18, 1870.
20 B. Catania, Antonio Meucci, Inventor of the Telephone: Unearthing the
Legal and Scientific Proofs, New York University, Casa Italiana ZerilliMarim, New York, NY, 10 October 2000, also published in Bulletin
of Science, Technology & Society 24(2), 115137 (April 1994).
21 U.S. Congressional Record: House of Representatives, on June 11,
2002, U.S. Congress enacted House Resolution 269 (Jo Ann Davis,
H3308 insert of 5-03-03) that Antonio Meucci, then an ItalianAmerican candle maker, is credited for inventing the telephone, 5
years before Bell.
22 Basilio Catania, Antonio Meucci: How electrotherapy gave birth
to telephony, European Transactions on Telecommunications 14,
539552 (2004).
23 B. Catania, Antonio Meucci: How electrotherapy gave birth to telephony, ETTEuropean Transactions on Telecommunications 14( No.
6, November/December 2003, p. 539552. Errata Corrige of Fig. 12
on Vol. 15, No. 3, May/June 2004, p. 293.
24 B. Catania, Antonio Meucci LInventore e il suo Tempo Da
Firenze a LAvana (Vol. 1). Seat Divisione STET, Editoria per la
Communicazione, Roma, 1994 and Catania, B., Antonio Meucci
LInventore e il suo Tempo New York, 1850-1871 (Vol. 2) .
Seat Divisione STET, Torino, 1996Translation in English
included in Ref. 3.
Angelo J. Campanella
received his Ph.D. from
the Pennsylvania State
University in 1955 in
Physics and Electrical
Engineering with theses in Acoustics and
ultrasound. He is a
professional engineer
in
Ohio
and
Pennsylvania, with
over 50 years experience in industrial
physics, electronics,
include room design for noise protection, acoustical privacy

and comfort, speech intelligibility and design for quiet in
meeting rooms and classrooms, vibration control in buildings and community noise due to transportation and aircraft
operations. He has testified as an expert witness on occupational noise and its effects on personnel, and the effects of
noise on residential and commercial land use.
He is a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), a
distinguished member of the American Society for Testing and
Materials (ASTM) Committee E-33 on Environmental
Acoustics (participating in the drafting of national and international acoustical material measurement standards), National
Council of Acoustical Consultants, the Concert Hall Research
Group, and the Institute of Noise Control Engineers. Angelo
formed the Central Ohio Chapter of ASA in 1976 and currently
serves as its president. He is an aircraft owner and pilot holding
commercial, instrument and flight instructor ratings.
applied acoustics and vibrations.

He has presented and published technical papers on
acoustics, noise and the associated hearing loss. These
Antonio Meucci
45
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION IN ACOUSTICS:

SCIENCE EDUCATION AND THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
ARE WE DOING ENOUGH?
Uwe J. Hansen
Department of Physics, Indiana State University
Terre Haute, Indiana 47809
coustical Society of
America (ASA) educational concerns cover a
vast range of interests and disciplines. This includes such
diverse university programs as
the physical sciences and engineering, life sciences, medicine, and architecture. Some of
the concerns are very self-serving such as issues related to the
growth of the Society and the
vitality of individual technical
committees; others are very much oriented to serve society
at large, such as the recently issued standard on Classroom
Acoustics. The quality of science education in secondary
schools is of vital interest, as is the introduction of science
concepts at the elementary level. Two examples will serve
to illustrate both the concern, and the need for ASA contributions.
In a recent conversation, the Dean of the College of
Arts and Sciences at Indiana State University mentioned to
me that figures presented at a national conference of university administrators suggest that about 60% of all secondary school physics teachers in the US are over 60 years old,
and that there are very few, if any, replacements in the pipe
line. Local high school principals comment that they have
no problem filling vacancies in nearly all fields, including
most sciences, however, not so in physics. This decline in
qualified science teachers is of grave concern, especially to
scientists. While ASA members are active in a vast range of
disciplines, covering nearly all sciences and some of the
arts, the physics of sound and vibrations is vital for all of
them. Details of both current and proposed ASA activities
to address this national need are discussed in the following
paragraphs.
A second example suggests that many buildings such as
schools and churches are constructed without input from
competent acousticians. While on sabbatical at the
Physikalisch Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in
Braunschweig, Germany (their Bureau of Standards), I
attended a religious conference in Hannover. This conference was held in a recently constructed church building
which included a sanctuary, and a facility of approximately
the same size, which usually is used for sports and recreation. The spaces are separated by a set of two classrooms
with relatively low ceilings which are closed off by means of
folding-door walls. For large audiences the folding doors
are opened and the recreation area serves as an overflow. No
acoustic delay had been introduced into the electronic
amplification system, and reverberation times were rather
46
large, making the spoken word

nearly unintelligible in the
overflow area, and music quality totally unacceptable. I was
asked to make some suggestions for improvement. I recommended
some
sound
absorbing wall panels and a
delay for the speakers in the
overflow area. Both suggestions were implemented with
significant improvement; however, significantly better results
would have been noticed with appropriate pre-construction
consulting.
There clearly is a need for action in four areas:
1. Educating our own
2. Educating acousticians in all fields of acoustics
3. Generating enthusiasm for all sciences in the very young
4. Educating the general public
1. By our own I mean ASA members and all who
work in some field of acoustics. In fact, as a Society we do a
remarkable job of disseminating the results of our efforts in
books, hard-copy or electronic journals, as well as in our
semiannual meetings. That educational effort has gained us
recognition as the world's premier acoustics organization.
Such recognition carries with it an obligation for outreach.
To some extent we are meeting that challenge by expanding a
parochial outlook to foster international cooperation. This is
evidenced by recent joint meetings with the European
Acoustics Association, the Mexican Institute of Acoustics,
and the Acoustical Society of Japan, and by an increased
international ASA membership. Internally our program of
tutorials has made us more aware of the efforts of our colleagues in sub-disciplines removed from our own, and the
Hot Topics sessions have given us the opportunity to view
the fore-front of the many fields under the umbrella of
acoustics. Workshops and short courses have been instrumental in giving access to our expertise to some of our own
people and to others in related disciplines.
2. University undergraduate and graduate acoustics
programs, as well as any pre-professional acoustics program
fall into the second category. The ASA is contributing to the
effectiveness of these programs by providing information
about details of acoustics programs in a listing on the ASA
web site. ASA student chapters and the ASA Student Council
help students to find a home in acoustics. Student receptions,
best student paper awards, the Robert W. Young Award for
Undergraduate Student Research in Acoustics, and the
Students Meet Members for Lunch program, furthermore
contribute to student activities. Students in turn have established a mentoring award. The Committee on Education in
Acoustics has organized workshops dealing with acoustics
demonstrations and laboratory experiments. In high school
workshops, readily available spectrum analysis software is
introduced and a number of acoustics experiments are discussed, along with ways of using them in the classroom context. Workshops for university teaching laboratories concentrate on more sophisticated experiments, including the use of
Lissajous figures to map normal modes by observing the
phase change across a nodal line, or constructing a simple
impedance head to observe resonances in open and closed
tubes. While these efforts have been appreciated locally,
much more needs to be done in order to observe measurable
results in a national program of science education. The committee has also organized a number of sessions at national
meetings dealing with course development and acoustics
programs, as well as specific courses in some of the acoustics
sub-disciplines, such as medical acoustics, architectural
acoustics, and musical acoustics.
3. The third topic is one of outreach. With evidently
declining interest in the physical sciences, it becomes
increasingly important to generate enthusiasm for such interests in the very young. Interest in physics is rarely initiated in
high school. At that level it can be nurtured, but unless
excitement is sparked earlier, sciences are frequently perceived as too difficult by this time. To exacerbate the problem, science content in teacher education programs at the
elementary level frequently emphasize the life sciences, and
the physical sciences are the poor country cousins. This suggests two solutions: teacher workshops, and class visits.
Workshops have been supported mostly with ASA technical
initiative funds, and also Eisenhower program money. ASA
volunteers have visited classes at all levels, some in connection with ASA meetings and some in the communities of residence of the scientists. Both approaches need to be expanded and institutionalized nationally. Efforts are currently
ongoing to establish a permanent reservoir of demonstration
equipment to support the hands-on demonstration sessions,
conducted at most of the ASA national meetings, for classes
of high school students and students in elementary schools.
Many of the workshops and class visits have focused on
using music as a vehicle to introduce science in the classroom. Music is universally loved and thus provides a remarkable tool to bridge the chasm to difficult science. At the elementary school level students do not know yet that science is
supposed to be hard. Thus that is the ideal time to make the
introduction. Most of the elementary workshops proceed
along the line of discovering the nature of wave propagation
on a long spring, followed by the concept of resonance as
exemplified by standing waves on a stretched spring. The
harmonic, integral multiple frequencies of higher resonances
are observed and related to the harmonic overtone series on
string instruments. Participating teachers build a
Pythagorean Monochord, which they then take back with
them to their classroom. The workshop finances also provide
for the long spring, and for as set of tuning forks along with
a tube tuned to the same frequency as one of the forks. The
science concepts are taught, as are their relations to music
principles and ways of presenting both at the level of the children. (Editors note: see article in this issue of Acoustics Today
by Busch-Vishniac and West.)
4. The fourth category is concerned with ASA efforts to
increase literacy among the general population, both in general
science, and in acoustics. Efforts are underway to improve the
ASA web site, with the specific goal of making it more accessible and more exciting. The site should convey general information about acoustics and entice the visitor to find out more.
Workshops and short courses, while generally designed for professionals, have included outreach efforts to serve the general
public. The annual award for a publication in acoustics by a nonprofessional has usually been given to a journalist, writing to a
lay audience. The Salt Lake City meeting tutorial, Musical
Acoustics: Science and Performance, will be open to the public
with special invitations to students at all levels It will intermix
introduction of science concepts, relevant to music, with lively
jazz performances.
In summary, much has been done, yet much of the energy
of the Society remains untapped. The recent assessment of the
direction in which the ASA needs to move to maintain vitality,
as well as provide additional leadership, both nationally and
internationally, included a recommendation for more emphasis
on education. With that in mind the immediate past president
of ASA appointed an ad hoc committee on educational outreach. Among other things, this committee is recommending
that a permanent ASA education officer be employed, in order
to accomplish some of the outreach tasks which are simply
beyond the scope of a volunteer army. One of the tasks of such
an officer would be to tap government and private foundation
funds to coordinate efforts on a national scale which have
proved so successful on a limited local scale.
With a Ph.D. in LowTemperature Solid State

Physics from Brigham
Young University (66)
Uwe J. Hansen spent two
years at the U.S. Naval
Research Laboratory as a
NAS/NRC
Research
Fellow before joining the
Physics faculty at Indiana
State University (ISU). About 15 years later he saw the light,
or better heard the sound and returned to his first love:
Musical Acoustics. His research has focused on mode studies
in musical instruments, primarily using holographic interferometry and computer animated modal analysis. He is a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and the Indiana
Academy of Science. He has served two terms as chair of the
technical committee on Musical Acoustics and two terms as
chair of Education in Acoustics. He served as chair of the
Physics Department at ISU, and also as president of the
Indiana Academy of Science, where he also was chosen as
speaker of the year for 1998. After retirement from ISU in
1998 he accepted an appointment as Executive Director of
CSUI, a consortium of Midwestern Universities.
Education in Acoustics
47
PHYSICAL ACOUSTICS:
THE PHYSICAL ACOUSTICS SUMMER SCHOOL (PASS)
Thomas J. Matula
Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington
Seattle, Washington 98105
he Physical Acoustics group within the Acoustical

Society of America is a very diverse community. The
scope of our work extends from infrasound, with frequencies as low as 1 mHz, up to high-frequency ultrasound,
where frequencies might exceed 50 MHz. Being so diverse, it is
difficult to discuss all aspects of physical acoustics in such a
short article. Instead, this article will focus on a topic of great
pride to our membersthe Physical Acoustics Summer School
(PASS).
With financial help from the Office of Naval Research
(ONR), the biennial Summer School was established in 1992.
The objective of the school has been to bring together students
and professionals for a week of lectures and informal discussions emphasizing various topics of interest to physical
acoustics. A high priority is placed on frequent interactions
between students and the expert lecturers. To accomplish this
goal, PASS is held in remote rustic locations where distractions
are minimized, and full week attendance is required for all participants. The isolation has obvious benefits for the students
as the week progresses, the students become more comfortable
and their interactions increase. Another benefit for the students
is discussions with other students. This is encouraged in part by
having students from different universities room together. The
result is new friends and future collaborators. However, the students are not the sole beneficiaries; without constant distractions and deadlines, the lecturers can also relax and enjoy scientific discussions with enthusiastic students and other participants.
The schools format is divided into formal lectures, informal discussions, and evening social discussions. The lectures
are held in a classroom setting. Most days consist of two 3-hour
lectures (with short breaks at the end of each hour). Because the
lectures are demanding, students are expected to possess a certain amount of background knowledge. Yet, because of the varied backgrounds of the students, mathematical rigor is often
replaced by physical insight. Normal topics that are taught
include nonlinear acoustics, thermoacoustics, medical
acoustics, infrasound, solid state acoustics, bubbles, and molecular acoustics. Specialized topics are also taught, including resonant ultrasound spectroscopy, sonoluminescence, outdoor
sound propagation, interaction of sound with light, transducers, and acoustic microscopy. An almost complete list of topics
is given below in Table 1 along with the names of lecturers who
have taught those courses over the years.
During the afternoon and evening breaks some participants play volleyball, while others might lay out in the sun, play
pool, or just hang out, relaxing and re-charging. The breaks
encourage one-on-one interactions between students and lecturers. Imagine being able to talk casually with an expert, without having to face them across a desk in an office with the telephone ringing and their e-mail program beeping at them.
Discussions can linger, and be continued later in the week. This
48
format also benefits the lecturers because they have similar time
constraints. As with the students, they can bring up a topic,
think it over, bring it up again, develop ideas, etc. over the entire
week.
Each evening there is a social that brings everyone together to
talk about that days lectures. The atmosphere is again very casual,
with beer and wine available to both lecturers and students over
twenty-one. Students are encouraged to ask more questions about
the lectures they heard. The lecturers may also go into more detail
about a particular topic, or discuss related topics.
Fig. 1. The evening social is relaxed, but scientific discussion is still required
One of the highlights of the summer school is the session on

acoustics demonstrations. Demonstrations are used to impart
physical intuition into waves and oscillators. For most of the summers, Bob Keolian and others have served as the Masters of
Ceremonies for the demos. In one 3-hour session, they might
show 15-20 demos, ranging from pendulums (to demonstrate
bent tuning curves or parametric oscillations) to phase locking of
oscillators, to acoustic motors, to hearing and cochlear waves.
Fig. 2. A Ruben's Tube demo uses flames erupting out of holes in a tube to
demonstrate waves of various sorts. Daphne Kapolka is running the experiment
behind the tube, with Bob Keolian assisting. According to Bob, there is a speaker on
one end of the tube sending in sound. The other end of the tube is blocked. Propane
enters through a port on the side and there are small holes every inch on the top.
The blackboard describes a previous demo on nonlinearities (bent tuning curve) in
simple physical systems (a parametric pendulum).
PASS is understandably a source of great pride in the physical acoustics community. It has been extremely successful; it is
internationally recognized, and attracts students from all over
the world on a regular basis. The physical acoustics community will endeavor to make PASS a wonderful learning experience
for future students. I wish to thank George Atkins, Logan

Hargrove, and Robert Keolian for help with this article, and
Hank Bass (NCPA) and the Army Center of Excellence
Picatinny Arsenal for continued financial and administrative
support for the Physical Acoustics Summer School.AT
Table 1: Standard lectures and specialty topics.
Thomas J. Matula is currently acting Director of the Center for Industrial and Medical
Ultrasound, with the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington,
Seattle, Washington. His research interests involve bubbles in a variety of applications,
from sonoluminescence to ultrasound contrast agents. He also is interested in applied
technologies that include shock-wave therapy, food processing and semiconductor
cleaning. His hobbies are just as variedfrom kayaking and sailing to playing electric
bass. He has personally benefited greatly from the Physical Acoustics Summer School
as a student, a discussion leader, and a lecturer.
Physical Acoustics
49
S t a n d a rd s
N e w s
STANDARDS NEWS: A NEW TITLE AND SCOPE

FOR THE INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR STANDARDIZATION /
TECHNICAL COMMITTEE 108 (ISO/TC 108)
Bruce E. Douglas
Resonance Technologies
Edgewater Maryland 21037
n December 2006 the Technical

The new title and scope ing to the work program of the TC. The new
Management Board of the International
title and scope reflects the growing imporOrganization for Standardization (ISO),
tance and multi-disciplinary nature of condireflects the growing
headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland,
tion monitoring in the work of the commitapproved a new title and scope for ISO/TC
tee. These changes were made to reflect betimportance and
108. The new title is Mechanical vibration,
ter the current program of work in TC 108
shock and condition monitoring. This title multi-disciplinary nature of and for consistency with the ISO approved
change formally recognizes and brings to the
Business Plan.
forefront the growing field of condition condition monitoring in the
ISO/TC 108 has been actively writing
monitoring of machines and structures and
vibration and shock standards for over
its importance in the agenda of ISO/TC 108.
work of the committee. forty years. First proposed to ISO on 29
The new scope of ISO/TC 108 was
May 1962 by the United States of America
approved as: Standardization in the fields of
Standards Institute, the predecessor organmechanical vibration and shock and the effects of vibration
ization to today's American National Standards Institute
and shock on humans, machines, vehicles (air, sea, land and
(ANSI), TC 108 held its initial plenary meeting in 1964. By
rail) and stationary structures, and of the condition monitorthe mid-1970s ANSI assigned the Acoustical Society of
ing of machines and structures, using multidisciplinary
America the responsibility for the Secretariat for TC 108.
approaches.
(ASA was already administering the national parallel comSpecific areas of current interest include the standardizamittee, S2.) When SC 5 was formed in the early 1990s, ASA
tion of:
again was tapped to provide the International Secretariat.
terminology and nomenclature in the fields of
The need to make these current changes has its roots go
mechanical vibration, mechanical shock, and condiback seven years ago when ISO/TC 108 was reorganized intertion monitoring;
nally into a set of working groups directly under the chair of
measurement, analysis and evaluation of vibration
TC 108. These working groups dealt with the basic science of
and shock, e.g., signal processing methods, structural
the TC 108 mission and subcommittees that are primarily condynamics analysis methods, transducer and vibration
cerned with the engineering aspects. Currently, the TC 108
generator calibration methods, etc.;
working groups have been formed to standardize:
active and passive control methods for vibration and
basic vocabulary and nomenclature issues (WG 1)
shock, e.g., balancing of machines, isolation and
vibration and shock isolators (WG 23)
damping;
condition assessment of structural systems from dynam evaluation of the effects of vibration and shock on
ic response measurements including structural
humans, machines, vehicles (air, sea, land and rail),
dynamics measurements methods, measurement
stationary structures, and sensitive equipment;
parameters and structural condition monitoring (WG
vibration and shock measuring instrumentation, e.g.,
24)
transducers, vibration generators, signal conditioners,
stationary and non-stationary signal processing involvsignal analysis instrumentation and signal acquisition
ing vibration, shock and condition monitoring issues
systems;
(WG 26)
measurement methods, instrumentation, data acquiviscoelastic material evaluation and structural damping
sition, processing, presentation; analysis, diagnostics
(WG 28)
and prognostics, using all measurement variables
vibration power flow methods (WG 29)
required for the condition monitoring of machines;
rotor balancing (WG 31).
training and certification of personnel in relevant
TC 108 subcommittees have been formed to standardize:
areas.
vibration of machines, vehicles (air, land and sea) and stationary structures (SC 2)
This change of mission statement represents a much needvibration and shock transducers and calibration methods
ed update. The previous scope, written in 1991, at the time that
(SC 3)
Subcommittee 5 (SC 5) was formed, added condition monitorhuman response to vibration and shock (SC 4)
50
condition monitoring of machines (SC 5)

vibration and shock generators (SC 6).
Most technical committees within ISO are assigned
along product lines and have a very strong manufacturing
component in their constituency. TC 108 is somewhat
unique in that it spans many constituencies. This is due to the
fact that its standards directly impact human health and safety, the environment, as well as the design of vehicles,
machines and national infrastructure, manufacturing, trade,
jobs and the economy in general. Standards written by this
Technical Committee can, and have, directly influenced who
gets a shipbuilding contract or which machine tool gets to
market, as well as which machine goes into a vehicle or building. These standards can even have a great impact on the
preservation of cultural monuments and historical buildings,
an issue of great current interest in Europe. The main impact
of TC 108 standards is to broadly influence customers and
markets by specifying acceptable vibration and shock levels
and to mitigate downside risk of failure in machines and
structures.
This is one of a few ISO Technical Committees that can
be said to impact the overall quality of life of nations. As a
result, the member countries send experts that reflect a wide
range of experience. Government representatives provide
expertise on the environment, the consumer, human health
and human safety from the user perspective. Experts from
the manufacturing and design communities are concerned
with customers and the marketplace. Those from academia
bring expertise in the basic sciences. This mix of experts
tends to act more in the interest of society at large, since consensus building is a strong aspect to reaching the final stage
of the process, an international standard. The diversity of
opinion and perspective in generating a standard is its primary strength and measure of its quality since technical standards are voluntary and primarily reflect the wisdom and
reputation of participating individuals and organizations.
Future directions of ISO/TC 108

As we enter the twenty-first century, the world is experiencing a revolution as profound as the industrial revolution
before itthe high technology, information revolution. Like
the industrial age, the high tech age is having a major impact
on all aspects of society. However, our Achilles heel is the
inherent complexity in high tech advances and the law of
unintended consequences. The technology behind many of
these significant developments is understood only by a select
few. The interactions between components of complex systems are often poorly understood and a need for robustness
and real-time monitoring has become a critical concern as
our reliance on such systems increases. This issue, more than
any other, drives the need for condition monitoring standards and explains the ISO decision to upgrade the visibility
of SC 5 within TC 108. As a result, the need to rapidly incorporate new technologies into the TC 108 work agenda has
become a paramount concern in order to keep these standards meaningful and relevant to the user community.
The main challenge in TC 108 is to develop quality standards that are based on a solid scientific foundation and yet
have met some test of time. These standards should be as
inclusive as possible, thus encouraging product innovation.

Good standards should account for the realities of life in a
wide range of economic circumstances without being unduly
complicated and burdensome to apply.
In the near future, ISO/TC 108 is going to re-examine
standards associated with the basic physics of the mechanical
vibration and shock response of complex systems and the art
and science of vibration and shock measurement. By emphasizing these areas, it is hoped that this committee can provide
tools that can be consistently applied to provide meaningful
measurement methods, repeatable measurement results, and
consistent databases with known uncertainty that are the
backbone for setting performance and condition monitoring
levels for acceptance, prognosis and assessment purposes.
In addition to measurement practices, this technical committee will undertake new initiatives in defining appropriate
vocabulary and symbols used in the vibration and shock community. The proliferation of new technology in this area is proceeding at such a rapid rate that inconsistencies in technical language are starting to be a problem. Precise language usage is fundamental for both public law and contract compliance. It is a
prerequisite for providing meaningful guidance to protect public safety, the environment and culture.
One working group has been established in the areas of
signal processing of vibration and shock measurement timehistories. This group is charged with generating international standards to classify vibration and shock signals as well as
analyze and identify feature sets from such measurements. It
is anticipated that these standards will assist the machine
condition monitoring community by improving the quality
of the databases by allowing them to be used for detailed
comparison purposes and precursor identification. For
example, a recent standard, ISO 18431-2:2004 Mechanical
vibration and shockSignal processingPart 2: Time domain
windows for Fourier Transform analysis, generated by this
working group standardizes the algorithm for time domain
windows for Fourier Transform analysis. This standard, if
widely applied, should result in data sets that can be compared more exactly for examining change in system dynamics over time, a critical issue for predicting failure.
Another working group is concerned with developing standards for vibration and shock data acquisition. Its scope is to
identify a set of key parameters that adequately describe the basic
conditions of a vibration measurement for the purposes of allowing the technical community to efficiently compare measurements and build meaningful databases.
After completion
of this task, its scope will broaden to shock measurements. These
standards will serve as the anchor for a planned compendium of
standards for making high-quality vibration measurements.
Two working groups have been formed to standardize
structural dynamics analysis and measurement tools for
assessing the dynamic behavior and state of complex structural systems. These tools are primarily based on the application of a known force and the subsequent measurement of
the amplitude and phase response at critical points in the system. Future project areas might include measurement methods for mechanical mobility, modal analysis, structural intensity, wave-number analysis (spatial array processing) and
structural damping evaluation. Current areas under study
Standards News
51
center include examining methods for assessing vibratory

power flow in complex structures.
Two other working groups were established that are concerned with the measurement of the dynamic system behavior, dynamic modeling and condition assessment of stationary structures such as buildings, dams, bridges and towers.
Specifically, these working groups will standardize the terminology, measurement procedures and analysis methods necessary to assess the dynamic state and condition of stationary
structures and to establish criteria and procedures for the
timely assessment of such structural systems. Structural systems under dynamic loading and under environmental stress
exhibit fatigue damage and aging (e.g., oxidation) over time
that, if not properly assessed, can result in structural failure
with potential danger to public safety as well as economic dislocations. These dynamic stresses can be produced by vibration and shock loading whose impact may be direct or indirect. Previous assessment methods relied heavily on inspection. However, in recent decades, advances in structural
dynamics evaluation/diagnostics methods have provided
insights into the assessment, dynamic modeling and current
condition of stationary structures that are both sensitive and
quantitative. This working group will exploit these structural
dynamics evaluation methods to develop standards of structural system condition assessment that can be used to protect
the public safety. One new standard, ISO 16587:2004
Mechanical vibration and shockPerformance parameters for
condition monitoring of structures, that has been generated by
these experts should help the insurance industry assess risk
better in insuring vehicles and structures.
The six subcommittees under the auspices of TC 108 each
have dynamic programs of work, that are detailed in references
1 and 2, with information also available on the ISO website
(www.iso.org). Examples include the work in SC 3 on transducer calibration. SC 3 is in the process of developing a series of
standards, that specifies the methods for the primary and secondary calibration of shock and vibration transducers under a
wide range of environmental conditions. This series of standards should serve as the basis for conducting vibration and
shock measurements for all other ISO standards.
SC 5 is involved with machinery condition monitoring and
is an example of standardization across major technologies. The
ISO Technical Management Board agreed to establish this subcommittee under the auspices of TC 108 due to the predominance of mechanical vibration and rotor-dynamic diagnostic
methods in this field. However, in addition to vibration sensors,
sensors for thermal imaging, sensors to assess oil contamination, acoustic emission sensors and simple thermometers are
widely used to provide clues to the state of a machine. To generate quality technical standards in this area requires in-depth
expertise in all the above areas and an understanding of the
interplay between different types of sensors.
The current portfolio of TC 108 consists of over 100 international standards. A compendium of many of the older standards can be found in the two ISO Standards Handbooks.3,4
Those readers interested in more information on TC 108
from an international perspective can contact Bruce Douglas,
the Chairman, at bruce.douglas@att.net, or Susan Blaeser, the
Secretariat. at sblaeser@aip.org. Those readers interested in
52
more information on TC 108 from a national perspective can

contact David Evans, the U.S. Technical Advisory Group
(TAG) Chairman, at dje@nist.gov or Susan Blaeser in her
capacity as the ASA Standards Manager.AT

1
2
3
B. Douglas, International Standardization of Mechanical

Vibration and Shock, The Story of ISO/TC 108, ISO Bulletin
(January 2001).
B. Douglas and E. Christ, The Role of Mechanical Vibration
and Shock Standards in Workplace Safety, ISO FOCUS (2005).
ISO Standards Handbook, Mechanical vibration and shock,
Volume 1 Terminology and symbols, Tests and test equipment,
Balancing and balancing equipment, Second edition 1995
(International Organization for Standardization, Geneva), ISBN
92-67-10219-2.
ISO Standards Handbook, Mechanical vibration and shock,
Volume 2 Human exposure to vibration and shock, Vibration in
relation to vehicles, specific equipment and machines, buildings,
Second edition 1995 (International Organization for
Standardization, Geneva), ISBN 92-67-10219-2.
Bruce E. Douglas is the current Chairman of ISO/TC 108, the

international body charged with
writing standards in the technical
area of mechanical shock and
vibration and the condition monitoring of machines and structures.
He is also the owner of Resonance
Technologies that specializes in the
development of novel structural
dynamics diagnostics and control
methods and devices. From 1988
through 1999, he was the Director of Research at the David
Taylor Research Center (DTRC), the U. S. Navys lead laboratory in naval architecture and the maritime sciences. From
1985 to 1988 he served separately as Head of the Target Physics
Branch and the Structural Acoustics Branch at DTRC and
from 1965 to 1985 he was a bench scientist at the Marine
Engineering Laboratory in Annapolis Maryland. In the area of
basic science he isolated three inter-laminar damping mechanisms inherent in laminated composites, developing both the
theory and experimental evidence to verify their existence and
optimize their performance. He has contributed to over 100
technical publications, presentations, standards and patents
over his career mostly in the areas of active and passive structural damping and vibration diagnostics and control. He
received his Bachelors and Masters degrees in physics from
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a Ph.D.
degree in mechanical engineering from the University of
Maryland.
N a t i o n a l
N e w s
Elaine Moran
Melville, New York 11747
Portrait of Ilene Busch-Vishniac

unveiled at Johns Hopkins
University
The portrait of Ilene BuschVishiniac, former Dean of the Whiting
School of the Johns Hopkins
University, was unveiled at a ceremony
on 28 October 2006 in Taylor
Auditorium. Painted by Baltimore
artist Sam Robinson, the portrait is
installed alongside those of her predecessors.
Ilene J. Busch-Vishniac is a
Professor of Mechanical Engineering at
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore,
MD where from 1998-2003 she served
as the sixth dean of the Whiting School
of Engineering.
Dr. Busch-Vishniac received her
undergraduate degrees in physics and
mathematics from the University of
Rochester, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees
in mechanical engineering from
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She worked at Bell Laboratories in the
Acoustics Research Department before
joining the mechanical engineering
faculty of The University of Texas at
Austin. She remained there until 1998,
when she joined Johns Hopkins
University as professor and dean.
She has authored approximately 60
Kenneth Cunefare named

full professor
Kenneth A. Cunefare, a member of
the Mechanical Engineering faculty at
the Georgia Institute of Technology,
was promoted to the rank of Full
Professor in recognition of his contributions in the fields of structural
acoustics and experimental facility testing methods. Prof. Cunefare has been
at Georgia Tech since 1992, which he
joined after spending a year at the
Technical University of Berlin, Institute
for Technical Acoustics, on the F. V.
Kenneth Cunefare
Hunt post-doctoral Fellowship."

Professor Cunefare is a Fellow of
the Acoustical Society of America and
has served as an Associate Editor of the
Journal of the Acoustical Society of
America in the area of Noise since 2002.
Abeer Alwan awarded Radcliffe

Fellowship
Abeer Alwan was one of 50 people
selected to be 2006-2007 Radcliffe fellows by The Radcliffe Institute for
Advanced Study at Harvard University.
At Radcliffe, the fellows work individually and across disciplines on projects
chosen for both quality and long-term
impact. Professor Alwan is one of only
two electrical engineers selected.
Abeer Alwan received her Ph.D. in
Electrical Engineering from MIT in
Credit: Photo by Tony Rinaldo
Portrait of Ilene Busch-Vishniac
technical articles and one book and

holds nine U.S. patents on electromechanical sensors. Dr. BuschVishniacs research focuses on noise
control and transducers (sensors and
actuators). Her noise control work
includes the design of highway noise
barriers to improve sound reduction
and, more recently, the characterization and control of noise in hospitals.
In the transducer arena, Dr. BuschVishniac has worked on the development of new materials to improve
microphones and loudspeakers
Dr. Busch-Vishniac is a Fellow of
the Acoustical Society of America. She
received the ASA R. Bruce Lindsay
Award in 1987 for outstanding contributions to developing an improved
understanding of the dynamic
response of electret transducers and
noise propagation in urban environments and the Silver Medal in
Engineering Acoustics in 2001 She has
received many other teaching and
research awards, including the
Achievement Award from the Society
of Women Engineers and the Curtis
McGraw Research Award from the
American Society for Engineering
Education. She has served in various
professional organizations including a
term as President of the Acoustical
Society of America, and a term on the
Engineering Deans Council of the
American Society of Engineering
Education.
Abeer Alwan
National News
53
1992. Since then, she has been with the

Electrical Engineering Department at
UCLA as an Assistant Professor (19921996), Associate Professor (19962000), and Professor (2000-present).
Dr. Alwan established and directs the
Speech Processing and Auditory
Perception Laboratory at UCLA. She
was the Vice-Chair of EE Graduate
Student Affairs from 2003-2006. She is
the recipient of the NSF Research
Initiation Award (1993), the NIH
FIRST Career Development Award
(1994), the UCLA-TRW Excellence in
Teaching Award (1994), the NSF
Career Development Award (1995),
and the Okawa Foundation Award in
Telecommunications (1997).
Professor Alwan's research interests
include modeling human speech production and perception mechanisms
and applying these models to speechprocessing applications such as automatic recognition, compression, and
synthesis. Dr. Alwan is a Fellow of the
Acoustical Society of America, and an
elected member of Eta Kappa Nu, Sigma
Xi, Tau Beta Pi, the New York Academy
of Sciences, and the IEEE Signal
Processing Technical Committees on
Audio and Electroacoustics and on
Speech Processing. 20042007. She was
an editor-in-chief of the Journal of
Speech Communication, and is a member of its editorial board. She is also an
Associate Editor of the IEEE
Transactions on Audio, Speech, and
Language Processing. She served on the
Acoustical Society of America Technical
Committee on Speech Communication
(1993-1999) and as a member of the
ASA Membership Committee, 20042007.
Emmanuel P. Papadakis named the

recipient of Mentoring Award
Emmanuel Papadakis was named
recipient of the American Society for
Nondesructive
Testing
(ASNT)
Mentoring Award in 2006. The award
for outstanding mentor was established
to recognize those people in the ASNT
working to encourage others to reach
goals they may have otherwise not
sought and to offer the rest of the
membership an example of what they
could be accomplishing by acting as
mentors.
Emmanuel Papadakis received a
54
Emmanuel P. Papadakis
Grace Clark
Ph.D.
in
physics
from
the
He is President of Quality Systems
Concepts, New Holland, PA, a firm in
quality and nondestructive testing consulting. Dr. Papadakis served as
Associate Director of the Center for
Nondestructive Evaluation at Iowa
State University and, prior to that,
managed quality control research at the
Ford Motor Company. He was also
Department Head at Panametrics, Inc.
and a member of the Technical Staff at
Bell Telephone Laboratories.
Dr. Papadakis was the recipient of
the Biennial Award of the Acoustical
Society of America (ASA) in 1968, the
1997 Mehl Honor Lecturer for the
ASNT, and the 1993 Tutorial Award
from ASNT. He is a Fellow of the ASA,
ASNT, and IEEE.
assistant at Purdue and worked in the

Mariner Telecommunications Group of
the Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Since 1974, Grace has been with the
University of California Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL),
where she is currently a research engineer in the National Security
Engineering Division. She has served on
the technical/thesis committees of three
MS and two PhD students at the
University of California Davis. She has
contributed more than 150 technical
publications and serves as a reviewer for
a variety of technical journals. She is a
Member of the Acoustical Society of
America, the Society of Exploration
Geophysicists (SEG), Sigma Xi and Eta
Kappa Nu. She is a Fellow of the Institute
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE).
Grace Clark named a Fellow of the

IEEE
Grace A. Clark has been elevated
to the rank of Fellow of the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE) for contributions in block
adaptive filtering.
Grace Clark earned the BSEE and
MSEE degrees from the Purdue
University Electrical Engineering
Honors Program, West Lafayette, IN, in
1972 and 1974, respectively; and the PhD
ECE degree in electrical and computer
engineering from the University of
California Santa Barbara in 1981. Her
research activities are in the theory and
application of signal/image processing,
estimation/detection, pattern recognition and control. Application areas
include acoustics, electromagnetics and
particle physics. She served as a teaching
Victor Zue will direct CSAIL

Victor Zue, co-director of MIT's
Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), will
become sole director of the lab, effective
July 1. Zue, former director of the
Laboratory for Computer Science, has
served as co-director of CSAIL since it
was formed in a merger with the Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory in 2003.
Zue's primary research interest is
the development of spoken language
interfaces to make human-computer
interactions easier and more natural.
Prior to 2001, he headed the Spoken
Language Systems Group, which has
pioneered the development of systems
that enable a user to interact with computers using multiple spoken languages.
Outside of MIT, Zue has served on
Victor Zue
many planning, advisory and review

committees for the U.S. Department of
Defense, the National Science
Foundation and the National Academy
of Science and Engineering. In 2004, he
was inducted into the National
Academy of Engineering. He is a Fellow
of the Acoustical Society of America
H. Frederick Dylla to head the

American Institute of Physics
H. Frederick Dylla has been selected to be the next Executive Director
and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of
the American Institute of Physics
(AIP). He replaces Marc H. Brodsky,
who retired on March 31 after more
than 13 years at AIP's helm. Dylla
assumed the role of CEO and Executive
Director on April 1, 2007.
I'm honored to be selected to be
the next AIP Executive Director, said
Dylla. I am very optimistic for the
outlook of the Institute to continue to
grow in its role of supporting the value
of physics for its Member Societies, the
physics community and the world at
large. I look forward to working with
the Member Societies to continue to
provide first-rate services and to collaborate on joint activities.
Dylla had been with the U.S.
Department of Energy's Thomas
Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
(Jefferson Lab) in Newport News,
Virginia since 1990. During this time,
he concurrently held an Adjunct
Professorship in Physics and Applied
Science at the College of William and
Mary. The author of over 190 publications, he received his B.S., M.S. and
Ph.D.
in
physics
from
the
Dylla is a Past President of the

AVS: Science & Technology of
Materials, Interfaces, and Processing,
one of AIP's ten Member Societies,
where he was elected a Fellow in 1998
and is currently a distinguished lecturer for the society. He is also a Fellow of
the American Physical Society. He is an
active member in numerous local and
regional technology development
organizations, including appointments
by the Virginia governor to two scientific commissions, and has served on
many national advisory committees for
the Department of Energy, Department
of Defense, and the National Science
Foundation.
Outgoing CEO and Executive
Director Marc Brodsky served AIP for
thirteen and a half years upon his
retirement. During his tenure, Brodsky
oversaw dramatic changes in AIP publishing and publishing services, as
nearly all editorial, production, distribution and business processes were
changed to deal with electronic publishing. All the journals and magazines
AIP publishes for itself and others went
onto the World Wide Web, increasing
access to the physics literature to more
people than ever before in history. AIP
outreach programs and services
expanded its informational offerings
for the general public to the Web and
many other media outlets, including
regular science news segments to over
50 million nightly viewers of local TV
news programs. He also actively
defended AIPs freedom of the press
rights on many fronts, including
attempted government restrictions on
the processing of manuscripts from
certain countries and suits from some
H. Frederick Dylla
comparisons of journal prices.

Headquartered in College Park,
Maryland, the American Institute of
Physics is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3)
membership corporation chartered in
New York State in 1931 for the purpose
of promoting the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics and
its application to human welfare. AIP is
one of the world's largest publishers of
physics journals, and provides publishing services for a multitude of journals
of physics societies and societies in
allied areas of science and engineering.
It is a pioneer and leader in electronic
journal publication. AIP's ten Member
Societies are dedicated to diverse areas
of physics and related fields. With an
annual budget of approximately $75
million, AIP has a staff of 450 employees in its College Park headquarters
and its Melville, NY publishing center.
There are over 134,000 scientists, engineers and educators represented by
AIP through its 10 Member Societies.
In addition, about 5,000 students in
700 chapters from colleges and universities take part in AIP's Society of
Physics Students. The AIP Corporate
Associates Program promotes connections between the people, ideas and
resources of its 35 member companies.
Concert Hall Research Group Third

Summer Institute held in Aspen,
Colorado
Nearly 60 participants attended
CHRG Aspen the Concert Hall
Research Groups Third Summer
Institutive in Aspen, CO held August
14-18, 2006. Participants included faculty members from the architectural,
acoustical consulting, theatre consulting, and teaching professions, practicing acoustical consultants and architects, university students, and accompanying persons. The Institute was
funded primarily by participants, but
also with a generous contribution from
the Robert Bradford Newman Student
Award Fund, which allowed all 13 university students to attend the Institute
free of charge. The textbook Concert
Halls and Opera Houses by Leo
Beranek was provided to participants
with the help of Leo Beranek, Bill
Cavanaugh, and the Acoustical Society
of America (ASA). The textbook
Acoustics by Charles M. Salter
National News
55
Associates, Inc. was provided to university students by Charles M. Salter

Associates. Advertising and marketing
assistance was provided by the ASA
Technical Committee on Architectural
Acoustics and the National Council of
Acoustical Consultants.
The clear air and magnificent views
in Aspen proved invigorating, and the
tradition of friendly networking, socializing, and sharing of information at
CHRG summer institutes was continued. Institute Chair Carl Rosenberg
handled the week-long event. Past
summer institute coordinators Bill
Cavanaugh and Tim Foulkes (CHRG
Tanglewood, 1999) and Chris Jaffe and
Robin Glosemeyer (CHRG Saratoga
Springs, 2003) joined the Institute as
invited VIPs and faculty.
Faculty members Jack Bogan, Bob
Coffeen, Tim Foulkes, Dana Hougland,
Chris Jaffe, Larry Kirkegaard, Vance
Larson, Ron McKay, Chris Savereid,
David Schwind, Gary Siebein, Rick
Talaske, Harry Teague, George Wilson,
and Michael Yantis presented material
supporting two general concert hall
design themesvariable acoustic
design and special design for sound
isolation and noise control. In addition
to classroom study, participants
toured three concert halls and attended
multiple concerts and rehearsals at the
Aspen Music Festival and School. On
Tuesday morning, architect Harry
Teague led tours his projects, the Harris
Concert Hall (along with project
Benedict Tent Tour- Group
56
acoustician David Schwind) and the

Benedict Music Tent (along with project acoustician Dawn Schuette). On
Tuesday evening, participants attended
a recital by Apollos Fire in the Harris
Concert Hall in Aspen. On Wednesday
afternoon, project acoustician Ron
McKay and project theatre consultant
Jack Bogan led a tour of the Vilar
Center for the Arts in nearby Beaver
Creek, where the performance space is
located directly under an ice-skating
rink (with obvious sound isolation
challenges). On Thursday night, participants attended a concert by the
American String Quartet at the
Benedict Music Tent in Aspen.
CHRG Aspen introduced a number
of new features, including presentations
of listening notes, a design challenge, and
a formal accompanying persons program.
On Wednesday morning and Friday
morning (after each of the previous
evenings concerts), a panel of participants presented their impressions of each
musical performance, spurring lively discussions. On Wednesday morning, small
groups of faculty, professionals, and students participated in The Robert
Bradford Newman Student Award Fund
Design Challenge, planned and orchestrated by Bob Coffeen and Gary Siebein
on the subject of performance
space/concert hall design. At the end of a
two hour design charrette, each teams
sketches and written results were taped up
on windows around the meeting room
and team leaders were given time to pres-
ent their impressive results. After these

presentations, it became obvious to the
coordinators that all teams had to be
declared the winners.
After the first CHRG Summer
Institute, participant David Egan wrote a
follow up report for JASA in which he
mentioned: It is anticipated that future
institutes will be organized in the years
ahead to build on the enthusiasm and
student-researcher-consultant-architect
links established during CHRG
Tanglewood 99. David was correct. All
three of the CHRG summer institutes
have generated enthusiasm in the field
of concert hall design, testing, and evaluation, and many, many links have been
generated. As at CHRG Tanglewood
and CHRG Saratoga Springs, the key to
success at CHRG Aspen was participation, and the coordinators wish to thank
all participants and sponsors for contributing their time, resources, and
enthusiasm to the Institute.
Planning for the fourth CHRG
Summer Institute (2009 or 2010) is
already under way. Locations on the
West Coast, in the Chicago area, and in
Europe have been proposed and are
under consideration, as are possible
themes for the Institute. Anyone
interested in helping to plan or coordinate (or in attending) the next institute
should contact Bill Dohn, Dohn and
Associates, Inc. Acoustical Consulting,
551 Embarcadero, Suite A, Morro Bay,
CA 93442 bill.dohn@gte.net, 805-7718434. (Written by Bill Dohn).
USA Meetings Calendar

2007
24-26 July
5-8 Oct
22-24 Oct
27 Nov-2 Dec
Revolutionary Aircraft for Quiet Communities,

Hampton, VA [A NASA workshop hosted by the
National Institute of Aerospace and co-sponsored
by the Joint Planning and Development Office
and the Council of European Aerospace Societies;
Web: www.nianet.net].
123rd Audio Engineering Society Convention,
New York, NY [Audio Engineering Society, 60
E. 42 St., Rm. 2520, New York, NY 101652520, Tel: 212-661-8528; Fax: 212-682-0477;
Web: www.aes.org].
NOISE-CON 2007, Reno, NV [Institute of
Noise Control Engineering, INCE Business
Office, 210 Marston Hall, Ames, IA 500112153, Tel.: (515) 294-6142; Fax: (515) 2943528; E-mail: ibo@inceusa.org].
154th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of
America, New Orleans, Louisiana (note
Tuesday through Saturday) [Acoustical
Society of America, Suite 1NO1, 2 Huntington
Quadrangle, Melville, NY 11747-4502; Tel.:
516-576-2360; Fax: 516-576-2377; Email:
asa@aip.org; Web: http://asa.aip.org].
2008
29 June-4 July
27-30 Jul
28 Jul-1 Aug
Acoustics 08, Joint Meeting of the Acoustical

Society of America (ASA), European
Acoustical Association (EAA), and the
Acoustical Society of France (SFA), Paris,
France [Acoustical Society of America, Suite
1NO1, 2 Huntington Quadrangle, Melville,
NY 11747-4502; Tel.: 516-576-2360; Fax:
516-576-2377; E-mail: asa@aip.org; Web:
http://asa.aip.org/meetings.html].
NOISE-CON 2008, Dearborn, MI [Institute
of Noise Control Engineering, INCE
Business Office, 210 Marston Hall, Ames, IA
50011-2153, Tel.: (515) 294-6142; Fax: (515)
294-3528; E-mail: ibo@inceusa.org].
9th International Congress on Noise as a
Public Health Problem Quintennial meeting
of ICBEN, the International Commission on
Biological Effects of Noise). Foxwoods
Resort, Mashantucket, CT [Jerry V. Tobias,
ICBEN 9, Post Office Box 1609, Groton CT
06340-1609, Tel. 860-572-0680; Web:
www.icben.org. Email icben2008@att.net.].
Make sure your voice is heard

Help shape the standards
that affect your business
PARTICIPATE!
ANSI-Accredited Standards Committees:
x
x
x
x
S1 Acoustics
S2 Mechanical Vibration and Shock
S3 Bioacoustics
S12Noise
ANSI-Accredited US Technical Advisory Groups:
x ISO/TC 43
Acoustics
x ISO/TC 43/SC1
Noise
x ISO/TC 108
Mechanical vibration,
shock and condition monitoring
and itssub
5comm ittees
x IEC/TC 29
Electroacoustics
For further information please contact:
Susan Blaeser, Standards Manager
Standards Secretariat
(631) 390-0215 sblaeser@aip.org
or visit us at http://asa.aip.org
National News
57
I n t e r n a t i o n a l
N e w s
Walter G. Mayer
Georgetown University
Washington, DC 20057
Ronald Aarts
Ronald Aarts elected Fellow of IEEE

The Board of Directors of the IEEE
has elevated Senior Member Prof.dr.
Ronald M. Aarts (Digital Signal
Processing group) to the Fellow Grade
from January 1, 2007, with the following citation: For research and application in signal processing for acoustics
and sound reproduction.
The IEEE Grade of Fellow is conferred by the Board of Directors upon a
person with an extraordinary record of
accomplishments in any of the IEEE
fields of interest.
I am very pleased. Especially if you
realize that only 0.1% of the IEEE members receive this honor, said Aarts. The
secret of my success? My personal three
Ps: Patents, Publications, and Product
innovations. Sometimes I add a fourth P
for People: doing research and cooperate
with others makes it more fun. So, I
would like to advise my colleagues to
mind the Ps!
Ronald M. Aarts received a B.Sc.
degree in electrical engineering in
1977, and a Ph.D. degree in physics
from the Delft University of
Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, in
1995. He joined the optics group at
Philips
Research
Laboratories,
Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in 1977.
There he initially investigated servos
and signal processing for use in both
Video Long Play players and Compact
58
Disc players. In 1984 he joined the

acoustics group and worked on the
development of CAD tools and signal
processing for loudspeaker systems. In
1994 he became a member of the digital signal processing (DSP) group and
has led research projects on the
improvement of sound reproduction
by exploiting DSP and psychoacoustical phenomena. In 2003 he became a
research fellow and extended his interests in engineering to medicine and
biology.
Dr. Aarts has published a large number of papers and reports and holds over
one hundred granted and pending U.S.
patents in these fields. He has served on a
number of organizing committees and as
chair for various international conventions. He is a fellow of the IEEE, a fellow
and past-governor of the Audio
Engineering Society, and a member of
the NAG (Dutch Acoustical Society), the
Acoustical Society of America, and the
VvBBMT (Dutch Society for Biophysics
and Biomedical Engineering). He is a
part-time full professor at the Eindhoven
University of Technology.
Murray Hodgson receives Canadian

Acoustical Association award
Murray Hodgson, Professor in the
School of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene and Department of
Mechanical Engineering, University of
British Columbia, was awarded The

Directors Award by the Canadian
Acoustical Association in 2006. Two
Directors Awards are presented annually
to the authors of the best papers published in Canadian Acoustics, the journal
of the Association. Professor Hodgson
received the award for his paper
Empirical Prediction of the Effect of
Classroom
Design
on
Verbal
Communication Quality.
Murray Hodgson received A
B.Sc.(Hons.) from Queens University
and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the
University of Southampton. Before joining the faculty of the University of
British Columbia in 1991, he was a
research Associate at the National
Research Council of Canada and a
Research Fellow at Sherbrooke
University. Earlier he held positions at
Cambridge University and Southampton
University. His current research includes
low-frequency noise in rooms, acoustical aspects of green buildings, auralization study of optimal reverberation for
speech intelligibility, active control of
sound fields in large rooms and classroom acoustics.
Professor Hodgson is a Fellow of
the Acoustical Society of America, and
a member of the Canadian Acoustical
Association, the British Institute of
Acoustics and the U.K. Engineering
Council. He served as Chair of the joint
meeting of the Acoustical Society of
America and the Canadian Acoustical
Association held in Vancouver, Canada
in May 2005. He is also the recipient of
Martin Hirschorn IAC prize of the
Institute of Noise Control Engineering
of the USA, Inc. in 2000.
Nico Declerq named assistant professor at Georgia Techs satellite

campus in Metz, France
Nico Declercq has been named an
assistant professor with the George W.
Woodruff School of Mechanical
Engineering in Atlanta with main activMurray Hodgson
Nico Declercq
ities at Georgia Tech's Satellite campus

(GT-Lorraine) in Metz, France. Prior to
his appointment, he was a Postdoctoral
Fellow of the Belgian National Science
Foundation at Ghent University.
Nico Declercq received B.Sc. and
M.Sc degrees in 1996 and 2000 from
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and
the Ph.D. at Ghent University in 2005.
His main research interests are in the
field of the ultrasonic nondestructive
evaluation of materials. His research
also includes more exotic topics such
as acoustic and ultrasonic diffraction
effects on corrugated surfaces and on
pyramids (Chichen Itza, Mexico) and
ancient theaters (Epidaurus-Greece).
Dr. Declercq is a member of the
Acoustical Society of America. He has
received the International Dennis
Gabor Award of the NOVOFER
Foundation for Technical and
Intellectual Creation (Hungary) in
2006 and served as a Guest Editor of
Ultrasonics in 2005. He was the recipient of the ASA's best student paper
award in physical acoustics in 2002.
Walter Kellermann selected to serve

at IEEE Signal Processing Society
2007 Distinguished Lecturer
Professor Walter Kellermann has
been selected to serve as one of five distinguished lecturers of the Signal
Processing Society of the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE). The IEEEs
Distinguished Lecturer Program
provides means for chapters to have
access to individuals who are well known

educators and authors in the fields of signal processing, to lecture at Chapter
meetings. His lecture topic is Signal
Processing for Acoustic Communication.
Walter Kellermann is a Professor,
Multimedia Communications and Signal
Processing at the University of ErlangenNuremberg, Germany. He received the
Dipl.-Ing. (univ.) degree in Electrical
Engineering from the University of
Erlangen-Nuremberg in 1983, and the
Dr.-Ing. degree from the Technical
University Darmstadt, Germany, in 1988.
From 1989 to 1990, he was a Postdoctoral
Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell
Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ. In 1990, he
joined
Philips
Kommunikations
Industrie, Nuremberg, Germany.
From 1993 to 1999, he was a
Professor, Fachhochschule Regensburg,
where he also became Director,
Institute of Applied Research in 1997.
In 1999, he co-founded DSP Solutions,
a consulting firm in digital signal processing, and joined the University
Erlangen-Nuremberg as a Professor
and Head, Audio Research Laboratory.
From 2002 to 2006, he was a Dean of
Studies, Faculty of Engineering,
University Erlangen-Nuremberg, overseeing organization and quality assurance of more than 500 courses per
semester. He is also continuously consulting to industry in his technical
field, and he acts as a consultant to governmental institutions on the national
and European level regarding research
and university politics.
Professor
Kellermann
has
Walter Kellermann
authored or co-authored eight book

chapters and more than 100 refereed
papers in journals and conference proceedings. He has served as a guest editor for various journals, as Associate
Editor (and guest editor), IEEE
Transactions on Speech and Audio
Processing (2000-2004), and presently
serves as Associate Editor, EURASIP
Journal on Applied Signal Processing
and EURASIP Journal on Signal
Processing. He was the General Chair,
International
Workshop
on
Microphone Arrays (2003) and the
IEEE Workshop on Applications of
Signal Processing to Audio and
Acoustics (2005). His current research
interests include speech signal processing, array signal processing, adaptive
filtering, and its applications to
acoustic human/machine interfaces.
International Commission
for Acoustics admitted to
International Council for Science
The International Council for
Science (ICSU), having received the
requisite support letters and no objections, has now formally admitted the
International
Commission
for
Acoustics (ICA) as a Scientific
Associate. ICSU is a nongovernmental
and provides a forum for discussions of
international science as it may be related to policy issues. The President of
ICSU is Goverdhan Mehta (India) who
succeeded Jan Lubchenco (USA). The
secretariat of ICSU is in Paris and the
next meeting of the Council will be
held in 2008 in Mozambique.
The International Commission for
Acoustics (ICA) is an organization in
which the Acoustical Society of
America (ASA) has been actively
involved. Lawrence Crum, a past president of ASA and Gilles Daigle, the current President-Elect of ASA, are Past
Presidents of ICA and Charles Schmid,
ASA Executive Director, is now serving
on the board of the Commission.
Information about ICSU can be
found at www.icsu.org and information about ICA can be found at
www.icacommission.org.
International News
59
International Meetings Calendar

2007
1-3 June
3-7 June
4-6 June
18-21 June
25-29 June
2-6 July
3-5 July
4-7 July
912 July
6-10 August
27-31 August
28-31 August
27 September
912 September
9-12 September
60
Second International Symposium on Advanced

Technology of Vibration and Sound, Lanzhou,
China [Web: www.jsme.or.jp/dmc/Meeting/
VSTech2007.pdf]
11th International Conference on HandArm
Vibration, Bologna, Italy [Web: http://www.
associazioneitalianadiacustica.it/HAV2007/index.htm]
JapanChina Joint Conference on Acoustics,
Sendai, Japan [Fax: 81 3 5256 1022; Web:
www.asj.gr.jp/eng/index.html]
Oceans07 Conference, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
[Web: www.oceans07ieeeaberdeen.org]
2nd International Conference on Underwater
Acoustic Measurements: Technologies and
Results, Heraklion, Crete, Greece [Web:
www.uam2007.gr]
Eighth International Conference on Theoretical
and Computational Acoustics, Heraklion, Crete,
Greece [Web: www.iacm.forth.gr/ ~ictca07]
First European Forum on Effective Solutions for
Managing Occupational Noise Risks, Lille,
France [Web: www.noiseatwork.eu]
International Clarinet Association Clarinetfest,
Vancouver,
BC,
Canada
[E-mail:
john.cipolla@wku.edu]
14th International Congress on Sound and
Vibration (ICSV14), Cairns, Australia [E-mail:
n.kessissoglou@unsw.edu.au]
16th International Congress of Phonetic
Sciences (ICPhS2007), Saarbrucken, Germany
[Web: www.icphs2007.de]
Interspeech 2007, Antwerp, Belgium [Web:
www.interspeech 2007.org]
Inter-Noise 2007, Istanbul, Turkey [Web:
www.internoise2007.org.tr]
19th International Congress on Acoustics
(ICA2007), Madrid, Spain [SEA, Serrano 144,
28006 Madrid, Spain; Web: www.ica2007
madrid.org]
ICA Satellite Symposium on Musical Acoustics
(ISMA2007), Barcelona, Spain [SEA, Serano
144, 28006 Madrid, Spain; Web: www.ica2007
madrid.org]
ICA Satellite Symposium on Room Acoustics
17-19 September
18-19 September
19-21 September
24-28 September
3-5 October
9-12 October
(ISRA2007), Sevilla, Spain [Web: www.isra2007.

org]
Third International Symposium on Fan Noise,
Lyon, France [Web: www.fannoise.org]
International Conference on Detection and
Classification of Underwater Targets,
Edinburgh, UK [Web: ioa.org.uk]
Autumn Meeting of the Acoustical Society of
Japan, Kofu, Japan [Fax: 81 3 5256 1022; Web:
www.asj.gr.jp/index-en.html]
XIX Sessions of the Russian Acoustical Society,
Nizhny, Novgorod, Russia [Web: www.akin.ru]
Pacific Rim Underwater Acoustics Conference,
Vancouver, Canada [Web: http://pruac2.
apl.washington.edu/index.html]
2007 Canadian Acoustic Conference, Montreal,
Quebec, Canada [Web: caa-aca.ca]
2008
29 June-4 July
Acoustics 08, Joint Meeting of European

Acoustical Association (EAA), Acoustical
Society of America (ASA), and Acoustical
Society of France (SFA), Paris, France [E-mail:
phillipe.blanc-benon@ec-lyon.fr; Web: www.
sfa.asso.fr]
7-10 July
18th International Symposium on Nonlinear
Acoustics (ISNA18), Stockholm, Sweden [Email (temporary): benflo@mech.kth.se]
28 Jul-1 Aug
9th International Congress on Noise as a Public
Health Problem, Mashantucket, Pequot Tribal
Nation (ICBEN 9, P.O. Box 1609, Groton, CT
06340-1609, USA [Web: ww.icben.org]
22-26 September INTERSPEECH 2008 10th ICSLP, Brisbane,
Australia [Web: www.interspeech2008.org]
1-5 November
2009
6-10 September
2010
23-27 Aug
IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium,

Beijing, China [Web: www.ieee-uffc.org/
ulmain.asp?page=symposia]
InterSpeech 2009, Brighton, UK [Web:
www.interspeech2009.org]
20th International Congress on Acoustics
(ICA2010),
Sydney,
Australia
[Web:
www.acoustics.asn.au]
T h e
L i b r a r y
Dick Stern

Acoustics Today welcomes items for The Library. Submissions of about 250 words that may be edited in MSWord or plain
text files should be e-mailed to AcousticsToday@aip.org. Graphics must be at least 300 dpi, preferably in TIF format. Please
send the text and graphics in separate files.
Book Title: Vibration in

Continuous Media
Author: Jean-Louis Guyader
Publisher: iste (www.iste.co.uk)
ISBN: 978.1 905209 27 9
Pages: 448
Chapters: 12
Binding: Hard Cover
Publication Date: September
2006
This book is concerned
with vibration in continuous
elastic solid media and discusses both the physical phenomena and prediction methods. In
addition, it offers a synthesis of reference results on vibration
in beams and plates.
Three aspects are developed in this book: modeling, a
description of the phenomena and computation methods. A
particular effort has been made to provide a clear understanding of the limits associated with each modeling
approach. Examples of applications are used throughout the
book to provide a better understanding of the material presented.
Jean-Louis Guyader is Professor of Vibration and
Acoustics within the Mechanical Engineering Department at
INSA, Lyon, France and Director of the Vibration and
Acoustics Laboratory. His research covers the acoustic radiation of structures in light or heavy fluids and the energy
propagation in vibrating structures and acoustic media.
Book Title: Springer

Handbook of Acoustics
Editor: Thomas D.
Rossing
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0387304460
Pages: Over 1100 plus a
CD
Chapters: 28
Binding: Hard Cover
Publication Date:
Available August 2007
The Springer Handbook
of Acoustics, edited by
Thomas Rossing (Editor
of ECHOES), is one of the newest handbooks in the Springer
Handbook series. It covers most of the hottest fields in
acoustics and is written by an international team of distinguished acousticians from Australia, Canada, Denmark,
France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Sweden, United Kingdom,
and United States. Chapters, which vary in length from 12 to
136 pages, describe some of the latest research in acoustics
along with in-depth reviews of both fundamental theory and
applications. Most of the authors are Fellows or members of
the Acoustical Society of America (ASA). The Handbook is
organized into 9 parts: Propagation of Sound; Physical and
Nonlinear Acoustics; Architectural Acoustics; Hearing and
Signal Processing; Music, Speech and Electroacoustics;
Biological and Medical Acoustics; Structural Acoustics and
Noise; Acoustical Measurements.
Editors NoteThe items printed in The Library are reported for informational purposes only and are not necessarily
endorsements by the author, the Editor, Acoustics Today, or the Acoustical Society of America.
The Library
61
T h e
L a b
Dick Stern
Acoustics Today welcomes items for The Lab. Submissions of about 250 words that may be edited in MSWord or plain text
files should be e-mailed to AcousticsToday@aip.org. Graphics must be at least 300 dpi, preferably in TIF format. Please send
the text and graphics in separate files.
Vibration data acquisition may be easy with the new

IOTech 600 Series of dynamic signal analyzers (dsa) and eZSeries software. These instruments come in either USB or
Ethernet versions for maximum flexibility. The hardware
provides signal conditioning and data acquisition while the
eZ Series PC-based software provides monitoring and analysis functions. The units are targeted for Noise, Vibration, and
Harshness and Rotating Machinery applications. The two
models have 4 or 5 analog inputs. Four end user software
packages are availablethroughput data recording and multiple channel vibration analysis; on-line vibration measurement, limit checking, transient data storage, and rotatingmachinery analysis; balanced of rotating machinery with up
to seven planes; and production applications to determine
the quality of production products. (www.instruments.com)
Larson Davis, a division of PCB Piezotronics, Inc., has

introduced the addition of Model 2221 power supply to its
growing line of acoustic accessories. Model 2221 is a singlechannel power supply, designed for use with traditional,
externally polarized condenser microphones. The 2221 has
the ability to supply 0 Volt or a 200V polarization voltage.
User selectable features include a flat (Z), A, or C-weighting
filters and a 0, 20 or 40 dB gain switch. One of it features is
the enhanced battery life, which can last up to 40 hours on a
set of AA batteries. This battery life can be approximately
doubled when using e-Lithium batteries. The unit can also
be run with on-line power via supplied adaptor. The product
is a perfect compliment to data recorders, data loggers and
frequency analyzers.
(www.larsondavis.com)
Scantek, Inc., is pleased to announce the availability of
the Model VC12D from MMF. The precision instrument was
developed for the calibration of non-contact displacement
sensors. Its fastening device for displacement sensors is
detachable for the calibration of accelerometers and velocity
transducers. The load independent vibration level of 10 m/s2
is selectable between 10 m RMS and 1g. Thus the unit can be
used for calibration in both metric units and gravity The factory calibration of the MMF Calibrators is based on a primary reference standard of German National Metrology
Authority (PTB). The instrument is supplied with a factory
calibration certificate. (www.scantekinc.com
Editors NoteThe items printed in The Lab are reported for informational purposes only and are not necessarily
endorsements by the author, the Editor, Acoustics Today, or the Acoustical Society of America.
62
P a s s i n g s
Dick Stern
Acoustics Today welcomes items for Passings. Submissions of about 250 words that may be edited in MSWord or plain
text files should be e-mailed to AcousticsToday@aip.org. Graphics must be at least 300 dpi, preferably in TIF format. Please
send the text and graphics in separate files.
William Thomson, Jr.

William Thompson, Jr., 70, of
State College, passed away on 13
Feb.2007, at home, after a valiant battle with cancer. Dr. Thompson earned
a Bachelor's Degree from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
a Master's Degree from Northeastern
University and his Ph.D. from Penn
State. He taught 14 different courses at
Penn State including engineering science,
engineering
mechanics,
acoustics as well as satellite courses to
students at private and government
laboratories across the country. He is
the co-holder of two patents related to
transducers and is a Fellow of the
Acoustical Society of America. The
Penn State Engineering Society honored Dr. Thompson with its
Outstanding Teaching Award in 1984,
its Premier Teaching Award in 1993,
and its Outstanding Advising Award
in 1998.
Merle Lawrence
Merle Lawrence, born 26
December 1915 in Remsen, New York,
died peacefully in his sleep on January
29, 2007.
He retired from the
University of Michigan in 1985 as
Professor Emeritus of Otolaryngology,
Physiology, and Psychology. Merle
entered Princeton University in the
class of 1938. Upon graduation Merle
entered the Princeton Graduate School.
He and Dr. E. G. Wever published several papers using the electrical
response of the ear to calibrated sound
as a measuring technique. Merle
received his PhD in 1941 publishing his
thesis on Vitamin A Deficiency And
Its Relation To Hearing and was
awarded a National Research Council
Fellowship to begin work with Dr.
Stacy Guild in the Otology Department
of the Johns Hopkins Medical School.
Because of the threat of war in May,
1941, Merle volunteered to enter the
service as a Naval aviator, receiving his
wings and commission in April, 1942.
Merle flew over-water patrols from
Navy bases in the New Hebrides,
Guadalcanal, and others of the
Solomon Islands. Over the Green
Islands, while engaged in combat with

three enemy ships, sinking two and
leaving one on fire, his plane was crippled and he was wounded by enemy
fire. Following his service overseas he
was awarded the Silver Star Medal,
Purple Heart, Distinguished Flying
Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster, Air Medal
with three oak-leaf clusters, and other
medals including the Asiatic Pacific
Area Campaign medal with three battle
stars. In December of 1943, he was
assigned, as a flight instructor, to the
Intermediate Instructors School and
the School of Aviation Medicine at the
Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida.
While there he worked the acoustics of
microphones in oxygen masks.
After a year at Pensacola he was
transferred to the Bureau of Medicine
and Surgery in Washington, D.C.,
assigned as a pilot to the Division of
Human Factors in control of Naval air
craft and other weapons. His first task
was to solve the problem of aiming
errors in the launch of torpedoes from
submarines. He was next assigned to a
U. S. Coast Guard Squadron at Floyd
Bennett Field, N.Y that was the first to
use the military version of the newlydeveloped Sikorski Helicopter. Merle
was one of the earliest (number 11)
Navy helicopter pilots.
During his service with the Navy,
Merle wrote and published prolifically
and received the Secretary of the Navy
Commendation Medal. Upon release to
inactive duty in March of 1946, was invited to join the faculty as Assistant
Professor in the Psychology Department
at Princeton University. In September,
1952 he transferred from Princeton to
the faculty of the University of Michigan
Medical School, Departments of
Otolaryngology, Physiology, Psychology
and the Institute of Industrial Health.
Passings
63
With the help of Dr. Bruce Proctor, an

Otolaryngologist, Merle obtained
funds from the Kresge Foundation to
build a separate building devoted to
research on the ear and hearing. Merle
was appointed as the first director of
the The Kresge Hearing Research
Institute, a position he held from 1961
to 1983. During this period, among the
areas of his research, were those concerning the circulation of the inner ear
fluids, the physiological causes of
Menieres disease, blood supply to and
the electrical response of sensory cells,
and the influence of noise on the distortion products of the ear.

Merle received many academic
awards and honorsthe Service Award,
American Academy of Ophthalmology
and Otolaryngology; Award of Merit,
Association
for
Research
in
Otolaryngology; Gold Medal Award,
American
Otological
Society;
Distinguished Service Award, Princeton
Class of 1938; Distinguished Lifetime
Achievement
Award,
American
Academy of Audiology; Guest of Honor,
American Otological Society; and oth-
ers. For many years he served as consultant for various government agencies:
in Aviation Medicine to the Army
Surgeon Generals Office, National
Institute of Neurological Diseases and
Blindness, serving on the Advisory
Council to this Institute. He served on
the editorial board of the Archives of
Otolaryngology, the Journal of Otology
and others. He was a member of many
Otological societies: among these was
the prestigious International Collegium
Oto-Rhino-Laryngologicum Amicitiae
Sacrum.
ASA has been notified of the recent deaths of the following Society members:
Bradford A. Becken, Portsmouth, RI
A. E. Galef, Beverly Hills, CA
George Herman, Las Cruces, NM
D. Kent Lewis, Livermore, CA
Noboru Niwa, Tokyo, Japan
Leon H. Sibul, State College, PA
Ivan C. Simpson, San Diego, CA
Ronald T. Verrillo, Syracuse, NY
Henning E. von Gierke, Yellow Springs, OH
Helen M.Walkinshaw, Peapack, NJ
64
Business Directory
ACOUSTICAL CONSULTANT
Creating a quieter America since 1972
.
1575 State Route 96, Victor, NY 14564, U.S.A.
220 Rutherford Rd. S., Suite 210, Brampton, Ontario, L6W 3J6, Canada
Web Site: www.wccl.ca
Auditoriums Building Acoustics Multifamily

Noise: HVAC - Transportation Vibration: (all)
OEM Acculab RSS
Air Ultrasound
U.S.A. Phone: (585) 586-3900

Fax: (585) 586-4327
E-mail: info@wccl.com
Canada: Phone: (905) 595-1107
Fax: (905) 595-1108
E-mail: info@wccl.ca
Certification: ISO 9001:2000, Accreditation: ISO/IEC 17025 (1999), ANSI/NCSL Z540-1-1994

Compliance: ISO/IEC Guide 25 (1990), MIL-STD-45662A, ISO 10012-0 1992 (E)
Angelo Campanella, PhD, PE, FASA

3201 Ridgewood Dr., Columbus (Hilliard), OH 43026
614-876-5108 cell 614-560-0519 fax 614-771-8740
Visit : http://www.CampanellaAcoustics.com
Email: a.campanella@att.net
1533.01/02
A2LA ACCREDITED (ISO / IEC 17025)

BVQI REGISTERED (ISO 9001:2000)
We calibrate and repair all manufacturers Sound & Vibration Instrumentation
&RQVXOWLQJ6HUYLFHVIRU
19+WHVWLQJ
3URGXFWVRXQGTXDOLW\
&RQVXPHUSUHIHUHQFHWHVWV
0HWULFGHYHORSPHQW
6RXQGVFDSHVELQDXUDOUHFRUGLQJ
%LQDXUDOWUDQVIHUSDWKDQDO\VLV
.HQVLQJWRQ5RDG%ULJKWRQ0,
SKRQHID[
HPDLOFRQVXOW#KHDGDFRXVWLFVFRP
Business Directory
65
Classified Advertisements
ACOUSTICS TODAY RECRUITING AND INFORMATION CLASSIFIED ADVERTISEMENTS
Positions Available/Desired and Informational Advertisements may be placed in ACOUSTICS TODAY in two ways: display advertisements and classified line advertisements.
Recruitment Display Advertisements:
Available in the same formats and rates as Product Display advertisements. In addition, recruitment display advertisers using 1/4 page or larger for their recruitment display ads may
request that the text-only portion of their ads (submitted as an MS Word file) may be placed on ASA ONLINE JOB OPENINGS for 2 months at no additional charge. All rates are
commissionable to advertising agencies at 15%.
Classified Line Advertisements:
2007 RATES: Positions Available/Desired and Informational Advertisements
One column ad, $25 per line or fractions thereof (44 characters per line), $125 minimum, maximum length 40 lines; two-column ad, $35 per line or fractions thereof (88 characters per
line), $245 minimum, maximum length 60 lines. ( Positions desired ONLY ads from individual members of the Acoustical Society of America receive a 50% discount)
Submission Deadline: 1st of month preceding cover date.
Ad Submission: E-mail: Christine DiPasca at cdipasca@aip.org; tel.: (516) 576-2434. You will be invoiced upon publication of issue. If anonymity is requested, ASA will assign box
numbers. Replies to box numbers will be forwarded twice a week. Acoustics Today reserves the right to accept or reject ads at our discretion. Cancellations cannot be honored after
deadline date.
It is presumed that the following advertisers are in full compliance with applicable equal opportunity laws and, wish to receive applications from qualified persons regardless of race,
age, national origin, religion, physical handicap, or sexual orientation.
Positions Desired
Senior Staff Physicist at a large Silicon Valley corporation seeks position, anywhere
along or near San Francisco peninsula, in research and/or product development involving audiology, sound quality, psychoacoustics, acoustical measurements, or otolaryngology. Please respond to: AcousticsToday@aip.org (mention Box 1001 in your message) or
by postal mail to: Acoustical Society of America, Acoustics Today, Box 1001, Suite 1NO1,
2 Huntington Quadrangle, Melville, NY 11747-4502.
FOR ADVERTISING RESERVATIONS

AND INFORMATION
Please contact:
DEBORAH BOTT
Advertising Sales Manager,

American Institute of Physics
Two Huntington Quadrangle
Suite 1NO1, Melville, NY 11747
(800) 247-2242
516) 576-2430
Tel:
Fax: (516) 576-2327

Email: dbott@aip.org
Postdoctoral Position in
Advanced Sensing for the
Petrochemical Industry
ExxonMobil Research and Engineering has an immediate opening for a
Postdoctoral Fellow position in Advanced Sensing Science & Control
Science of the Corporate Strategic Research department located in
Clinton, New Jersey.
The successful candidate will be responsible for developing novel physical
sensing concepts/approaches as part of a fundamental or businesssupported research program.
The candidate should have the following qualifications:
A Ph.D. degree in Acoustics, Applied Physics, Electrical Engineering,
Materials Science, Chemical Engineering or other related fields.
Research experience in novel physical sensor development, advanced
signal processing and data analysis and sensor testing system design
and fabrication.
Some desirable qualifications include: experience with petroleum and/or
chemical industry problems, experience in acoustics and vibration
measurement and analysis, reactor imaging, down-hole and reservoir
monitoring, multi-sensor fusion, wireless sensor networks, non-destructive
testing and physical system modeling.
ExxonMobil offers an excellent working environment and a competitive
compensation and benefits package. Please submit your cover letter
and resume to our website: www.exxonmobil.com/apply. Please apply to
Post Doctoral Fellow (generic) and reference PDASCS-4241BR in
both letter and resume. Additional information about the position may
be obtained by contacting Dr. Limin Song (908) 730-2957, email
limin.song@exxonmobil.com, Fax: (908) 730-3198.
ExxonMobil is an Equal Opportunity Employer
66
I CALL HER
MY
HIDDEN MASTERPIECE.
AS SOON AS WE BUILT HER SHE SLIPPED OUT OF SIGHT. JUST LIKE WED PLANNED.
WITH STEALTH TECHNOLOGIES AND THE ABILITY TO STAY SUBMERGED
FOR UP TO THREE MONTHS IM NOT SURE WHEN ILL SEE VIRGINIA AGAIN.
BUT TO ME SHELL ALWAYS BE A WORK OF ART.
Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems, Marine Systems division, located in Sunnyvale, CA, is a world
leader in the development and manufacturing of large-scale propulsion and electrical systems for naval ships and
submarines. Marine Systems is part of the Naval and Marine Division within the companys Electronic Systems Sector. We
are currently seeking an Acoustic Vibration Engineer.
The qualified candidate will have a strong background in structural dynamics, vibrations, and acoustics, in addition to
being educated in Mechanical Engineering or Applied Mechanics.
The successful candidate will have a Doctorate degree with emphasis in Vibrations, Structural Dynamics, and Acoustics. A
Masters degree and a minimum of 5 years of related experience would also be considered. The successful candidate will
be experienced in the application of finite element codes and acoustic prediction software. Proficiency in using Matlab is
required. Experience in structural dynamics testing and mechanical design is strongly desired.
The successful candidate will also have strong written and oral communication skills, as he or she will be required to
make technical presentations. The candidate must have technical leadership abilities and be highly motivated to pursue
technology development.
A DoD Security Clearance is required. U.S. Citizenship is required. For more information on this and to apply online,
please visit our website at: www.careers.northropgrumman.com and reference job# 2389.
Achievement never ends.
2007 Northrop Grumman Corporation. An Equal Opportunity Employer M/F/D/V.
Classified
67
I n d e x
t o
A d v e r t i s e r s
ACO Pacific, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

www.acopacific.com
Acoustics & Noise Control (SINUS Messtechnik GmbH). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cover 4
www.ancoustics.com
Brel & Kjr.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Cover 3
www.bksv.com
Campanella Associates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
www.CampanellaAcoustics.com
Eckel Industries, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cover 2
www.eckelacoustic.com
ExxonMobil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
www.exxonmobil.com/apply
G.R.A.S. Sound & Vibration A/S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
www.gras.dk
Head Acoustics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
www.headacoustics.com
Krieger Specialty Products. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
www.KriegerProducts.com
Maxxon Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
www.Maxxon.com/am
Northrop Grumman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
www.careers.northropgrumman.com
Overly Door Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
www.overly.com
PAC International, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
www.pac-intl.com
PCB Piezotronics Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
www.pcb.com
Scantek, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
www.scantekinc.com
Sound Fighter Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
www.soundfighter.com
West Caldwell Calibration Laboratories, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
www.wccl.ca
Western Electro-Acoustic Laboratory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
www.weal.com
Advertising Sales & Production
68
For advertisement reservations or further information please contact:
For advertisement production inquiries, please contact and send files to:
Deborah Bott
Advertising Sales Manager
Acoustics Today
c/o AIP Advertising Department
Suite 1NO1
Melville, NY 11747
Ph: (800) 247-2242
Ph: 516-576-2430
Fax: 516-576-2327
Email: dbott@aip.org
Christine DiPasca
Sr. Advertising Production Manager
Acoustics Today
c/o AIP Advertising - Production Operations
Suite 1NO1
Melville, NY 11747
Ph: 516-576-2434
Fax: 516-576-2638
Email: cdipasca@aip.org
To view a pdf file of the Media Kit visit:

asa.aip.org/ATmediakit.pdf
Award-winning Innovation
Created for You
With over 60 years as pioneers within the
world of sound and vibration, Brel & Kjr
presents its innovative, award-winning,
4th generation of hand-held instruments
for sound and vibration measurement.
Development of this latest generation
Type 2250 was instigated and inspired
entirely by the requirements of users participating in in-depth workshops around
the world. The hardware has been
designed to meet the specific ergonomic
requirements of users, and the application software covers everything from
environmental noise, troubleshooting,
and occupational health, to quality control. The software packages can be
licensed separately, so you can get what
you need when you need it and wont get
left behind if your requirements change.
This way, the platform ensures the safety
of your investment now and in the future.
Created, built and made for you personally, youll find it will make a difference to
your work and all your measurement
tasks.
New Sound Recording Option

The Sound Recording Option works with
all other software modules, and lets you
record measurement signals in order to
identify and document sound sources.
Recordings are automatically attached to
the measurement and kept with it, even
after transfer of the data to a PC.
BA 0795 11
If you need more information

please go to www.type2250.com
HEADQUARTERS: DK-2850 Nrum Denmark Telephone: +45 45 80 05 00

Fax: +45 45 8014 05 www.bksv.com info@bksv.com
USA: 2815 Colonnades Court Norcross, GA 30071
Toll free (800) 332-2040 www.BKhome.com bkinfo@bksv.com
Australia (+61) 2 9889-8888 Austria (+43) 1 865 74 00 Brazil (+55) 11 5188-8166
Canada (+1) 514 695-8225 China (+86) 10 680 29906 Czech Republic (+420) 2 6702 1100
Finland (+358) 9 521300 France (+33) 1 69 90 71 00 Germany (+49) 421 17 87 0
Hong Kong (+852) 2548 7486 Hungary (+36) 1 215 83 05 Ireland (+353) 1 807 4083
Italy (+39) 0257 68061 Japan (+81) 3 5715 1612 Korea (+82) 2 3473 0605
Netherlands (+31) 318 55 9290 Norway (+47) 66 771155 Poland (+48) 22 816 75 56
Portugal (+351) 21 4711 4 53 Korea (+82) 2 3473 0605 Singapore (+65) 377 4512
Slovak Republic (+421) 25 443 0701 Spain (+34) 91 659 0820 Sweden (+46) 8 449 8600
Switzerland (+41) 44 880 7035 Taiwan (+886) 2 2502 7255 United Kingdom (+44) 14 38 739 000
USA (+1) 800 332 2040 Local representatives and service organisations worldwide
Type 2250 Inspired by Users
many
r
e
G
n
i
Made e Approval
p
PTB Ty .21 / 01.06
1
No: 2
Messtechnik GmbH
Soundbook + SAMURAI = the All-in-one instrument from SINUS Messtechnik GmbH

Multichannel Sound Level Meter according to IEC 61672-1, IEC 60804 and IEC 60651 type 1
SAMURAI basic software includes Sound Recorder, Frequency Analyzer, Reverberation time measurement
2 / 4 / 8 channels with 40 kHz bandwith, 2 x tacho-, 5 x AUX- und 2 / 4 x analog output channels
Various software options available for a wide range of applications in acoustics und vibration
Remote control, network integration and wireless synchronization of several devices possible
Alternative software packages: MEscope (direct device), si++workbench, SINUS MATLAB Toolbox
Soundbook
Designed for You:
Innovative
IEC conform
Inexpensive
User friendly
General purpose
Tough (MIL)
Reliable
contacts
Acoustics & Noise Control

P.O. Box 100
Carver, MN 55315
USA
SINUS Messtechnik GmbH

Foepplstrasse 13
04347 Leipzig
Germany
Phone: + 49 341 2442 90

Fax:
+ 49 341 2442 999
www.soundbook.de
Phone: +1 (952) 368 3590

Fax:
+1 (952) 368 3810
roger@ancoustics.com
www.ancoustics.com
Novel Dynamics Inc.

440 Laurier Avenue West, Suite 200
Ottawa, ON K1R7X6
Canada
Phone: +1 (613) 598 0026

Fax:
+1 (613) 598 0019
stan@noveldynamics.com
www.noveldynamics.com

Acoustic TODAY

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Acoustic TODAY

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

VOLUME 3, ISSUE 2

Penn States Applied Research Laboratory

Because you never know

Acousti-Mat II is the low-profile system that actually isolates

Also available Enkasonic, the original sound control mat.

For more information or a FREE GUIDE to acoustical construction:

Our low-profile sound control solution for

The Metropolitan Condominiums, San Diego

Proven on over 60 million square feet.

Dick Stern (AcousticsToday@aip.org)

Whitlow W. L. Au, Ilene J. Busch-Vishniac,

Dick Stern, Chair; Elliott H. Berger;

The Acoustical Society of America was founded in 1929 to

Acoustical Society of America

Maya FlikopDirector, Special Publications

Robert Finnegan, Manager-Exhibits, AIP

Acoustics Today, April 2007

ACO Pacific, Inc.

Microphone Power Supplies

Includes: PS9200 (XLR) Power Supply

ACOustics Begins With ACO

The Vice Presidents ViewWhitlow W. L. Au

48 Physical Acoustics: The Physical Acoustics Summer

THE VICE PRESIDENTS VIEW

had the unique experience of serving as the

It is heartening to see that the number of

    

STRUCTURAL ACOUSTICS TUTORIALPART 2:

isotropy (the fluid properties are

linearity (the fluid properties do

Structural Acoustics Tutorial 2

(FSI). FSI usually refers to how moving fluids interact with

Piston vibrating against an acoustic fluid

Acoustics Today, April 2007

vibrations are time harmonic (eiwt), and consider pressures in

where 0 is the fluid density, a is the piston radius, v is the

Fig. 2. Pressure distribution in the far-field of a radiating baffled piston. Top

ton surface). However, at higher frequencies, like koa=3, the

Fig. 3. Sound intensity distribution in the far-field of a radiating baffled piston,

where v* is the conjugate of the acoustic fluctuating particle

Figure 3 shows the far-field intensity for ka=3 on a dB

ACOUSTIC MEASUREMENT PRODUCTS

Prepolarized ICP and Externally Polarized (200 V)

Type 1 Condenser and Cost-effective Array Microphones

Linear Measurements to 192 dB

Low-profile Surface Microphones

Sizes from 1/8 to 1 Diameter

Full Complement of Low-Noise Preamplifiers

Your Front-End Solution for Sensors, Power Supplies,

Toll Free in USA 888-684-0013 24-hour SensorLineSM 716-684-0001

A Complete Line of Microphones, Preamplifiers and Accessories

Structural Acoustics Tutorial 2

piston. In fact, power can be calculated knowing a structures

Popular approximations for the low-frequency resistance and

The radiation resistance and reactance are the real and

Note once again that no piston structural properties appear in

Now, notice how R and X in the example are plotted in

The fluid loading (resistance R and reactance X) may be

Acoustics Today, April 2007

The radiated sound power curve in water illustrates the

Fig. 5. Mobility magnitudes (top), radiation resistances (middle), and radiated

Structural waves vibrating against an acoustic fluid

Fig. 6. Bending and acoustic wavenumber-frequency plot, with trace diagrams of

waves now radiate sound, as shown in the image in the middle