Preliminary experiments on noise reduction in cavities using active impedance changes

This paper reports experiments on the active control of enclosed sound fields via wall impedance changes. Two methods previously developed allow one to implement practically active acoustic impedances: the first is referred to as "direct" control and permits precise realizations for harmonic excitations, while the second is a hybrid passive/active feedback control well suited for random noise treatments. The two techniques have been already presented [1]; the contribution of this work relies on testing the efficiency of both systems in silencing two enclosures through experimental analyses, subsequently compared with classical analytical description. The first test cavity is one-dimensional; a global sound reduction is achieved by the hybrid system for a broadband primary excitation. The second system is a reactangular three-dimensional cavity closed by a simply supported elastic plate. The noise source is an external load applied at one point of the plate. Different impedance values are successively assigned, their effect being estimated through a global sound level indicator. Attention is also given to plate vibration changes, which may occur. Three typical behaviours of the plate-cavity system are investigated. A first experiment involves an excitation at an acoustic resonance and induces a weak plate-cavity coupling. The second, also at an acoustic resonance of the cavity, yields a strong coupling while the third corresponds to an off-resonance excitation. The hybrid feedback control system provides useful attenuation for all cases, and shows also a promising behaviour when dealing with broadband excitations. It confirms the interest of the method when classical feedforward active control fails, i.e., when reliable prior information of the undesired disturbance is not available. (C)2000 Academic Press.