Experimental studies on sound and vibration of a two-tone Chinese Peace Bell

In order to examine whether the characteristics of the bell are coincident with the design and make some constructive suggestions for the tuning of bell, the frequency characteristics of sound and the vibrational modes of a two-tone Chinese Peace Bell have been studied. With Welch's spectral estimate, the main partials of radiated sound of the bell have been found out. With time-frequency analysis, the changes of the spectrum with time have been shown. By conditional mean frequency (CMF) of the spectrogram of the sound, the change in the pitch of the bell has been discussed. With an accelerator, the vibration distributions on the different points of the bell have been measured. With short time spectrum analysis, the vibrational modes at different frequencies have been reconstructed. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.