The science of acoustics deals with the creation of sound, sound
transmission
through solids, and the effects of sound on both inert and living materials. As a
mechanical effect, sound is essentially the passage of pressure fluctuations through
matter as the result of vibrational forces acting on that medium. Sound possesses
the attributes of wave phenomena, as do light and radio signals. But unlike its
electromagnetic counterparts, sound cannot travel through a vacuum. In Sylva
Sylvarum written in the early seventeenth century, Sir Francis Bacon deemed sound
to be one of the subtlest pieces of nature, but he complained, the nature of sound
in general hath been superficially observed. His accusation of superficiality from
the perspective of the mode viewpoint was justified for his time, not only for
acoustics, but also for nearly all branches of physical science. Frederick V. Hunt
(1905–1967), one of America’s greatest acoustical pioneers, pointed out that the
seeds of analytical self-consciousness were already there, however, and Bacon’s
libel against acoustics was eventually discharged through the flowering of a clearer
comprehension of the physical nature of sound.
Mode acoustics is vastly different from the field that existed in Bacon’s time
and even 20 years ago. It has grown to encompass the realm of ultrasonics and
infrasonics in addition to the audio range, as the result of applications in materials
science, medicine, dentistry, oceanology, marine navigation, communications,
petroleum and mineral prospecting, industrial processes, music and voice synthesis,
animal bioacoustics, and noise cancellation. Improvements are still being made
in the older domains of music and voice reproduction, audiometry, psychoacoustics,
speech analysis, and environmental noise control.
This text—aimed at science and engineering majors in colleges and universities,
principally undergraduates in the last year or two of their programs and graduation
students, as well as practitioners in the field—was written with the assumption that
the users of this text are sufficiently versed in mathematics up to and including the
level of differential and partial differential equations, and that they have taken the
sequence of undergraduate physics courses that satisfy engineering accreditation
criteria. It is my hope that a degree of mathematical elegance has been sustained
here, even with the emphasis on engineering and scientific applications. While
the use of SI units is stressed, very occasional references are made to physical parameters expressed in English (or Imperial) units. It is strenuously urged that
laboratory experience be included in the course (or courses) in which this text
is being used. The student of acoustics will thus obtain a far keener appreciation
of the topics covered in recitation classes when he or she gains hand on
experience in the use of sound—level meters, signal generators, frequency
analyzers, and other measurement tools.
Many of the later chapters in the text are self-contained in the sense that an
instructor may skip certain segments in order to concentrate on the agenda most
appropriate to the class. However, mastery of the materials in the earlier chapters,
namely, Chapters 1–6, is obviously requisite to understanding of the later chapters.
Chapters such as those dealing with musical instruments or underwater sound
propagation or the legal aspects of environmental noise can be skipped in order to
accommodate academic schedules or to allow concentration on certain topics of
greater interest to the instructor (and, hopefully, his or her class) such as ultrasound,
architectural acoustics, or other topics. Problems of different levels of difficulty
are included at the end of nearly all of the chapters. Many of the problems entail
the theoretical aspects of acoustics, but a number of practical questions have
also been included.
As an author, I hope that I have successfully met the challenge of providing
a mode, fairly comprehensive text in the field for the benefit of both students
and practitioners, whether they are scientists or engineers. In using parts of this
book in prepublication editions in teaching acoustics classes, I have benefited from
feedback and suggestions from my students. A number of them have proven to be
quite eagle-eyed, as they have supplied a continuous stream of recommendations
and corrections, even after the publication of the first edition. It is impossible to
acknowledge them all, but Gregory Miller and Jos?e Sinabaldi come to mind as
being among the most assiduous. A number of my colleagues and friends have
gone through the chapters of the first edition. The real genesis of the first edition
occurred when Harry Himmelblau saw the prepublication copy when I was a summer
visiting professor at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and he urged me to
consider publication. In particular I must acknowledge Paul Arveson, now retired
from the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock of Bethesda, Maryland, who
went through the first three chapters with a fine-toothed comb, M. G. Prasad of
Stevens Institute of Technology who made a number of extremely valuable suggestions
for Chapter 9 in instrumentation, and Edith Corliss who greatly encourage
me on Chapter 10 dealing with the mechanism of hearing. Dr. Zouhair Lazreq,
who did his postdoctorate under my tutelage, also looked over some of the chapters,
Martin Alexander has been helpful in obtaining illustrations for Chapter 9 in
both editions from Br?uel and Kj?r; Dr. Volker Irmer of Germany’s Federal Environmental
Agency introduced me to the European Union’s noise regulations and
other inteational codes, and Armand Leer arranged to have materials forwarded
from Eckel Corporation of Cambridge, Massachusetts. James E. West, formerly
of Lucent Bell Laboratories (and now at the Johns Hopkins University) and past
president (1998–1999) of the Acoustical Society of America, was instrumental in providing photographs of the anechoic chamber. I am also indebted to Caleb
Cochran of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Steve Lowe of the Seattle Symphony
Orchestra, Elizabeth Canada of theKennedy Center, Sandi Brown of the Minnesota
Orchestral Association, Rachelle B. Roe of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Thomas
D. Rossing of Northe Illinois University, Ann C. Perlman of the American Institute
of Physics, KarenWelty of Abbott Laboratories, Tom Radler of Hohner, Inc.,
and others, too many to list here, for their help in providing photographs, certain
figures, and/or permission to reproduce the figures.
I regarded the preparation of this second edition as a splendid opportunity to
update The Science and Applications of Acoustics. A number of features have
been added to this new edition. Besides the obvious updating of information on
acoustic research and applications throughout the text, a section on prosthetic
hearing devices was added to Chapter 10; and the original Chapter 17 was split
into two chapters, one covering music and music instrumentation and the other
dealing with audio processors and sound reproduction. The topic of ultrasound
has also been expanded to the extent that two chapters became necessary, with the
latter chapter treating the increasingly important topic of medical and industrial
applications. An introduction to nonlinear acoustics is provided in Chapter 21.
I also must take this opportunity to thank many of my fellow acousticians for
their comments and suggestions for the second edition. It is hoped that all of
the errors in the first edition has been weeded out and there are precious few, if
any, in this volume. Suggestions for improving the text have come from M. G.
Prasad, Stevens Institute of Technology; Yves Berthelot, Georgia Institute of
Technology; Mark Hamilton, University of Texas at Austin; Neville H. Fletcher,
Australian National University; Uwe Hansen, Indiana State; Frank J. Fahy,
University of Southhampton; Carleen M. Hutchins,Violin Family Association; and
others.
Springer-Verlag’s Dr. Hans Koelsch and Ronald Johnson served ably as the
editor and acquisitions editor, respectively.Komila Bhat supervised the editing process
and Natacha Menar proved to be instrumental in expediting this publication;
their contribution surely helped to improve this second edition. It was a pleasure
to work with them. I am still grateful for the past contributions of Dr. Thomas von
Foerster and Steven Pisano, who both worked with me at Springer-Verlag on the
first edition. Dr. Robert Beyer, the editor of this AIP series dealing with acoustics,
provided a great deal of encouragement and inspiration. He has my unbounded
admiration (and that of virtually every acoustician) for the range of his knowledge
and extraordinary wisdom. I deem it a rare privilege to know such a person.
In the preparation of the second edition, my chief source of inspiration and
support continues to come from my wife, Geri. My past and present works were
stimulated by the radiance of her presence.
Daniel R. Raichel
Fort Collins, Colorado
through solids, and the effects of sound on both inert and living materials. As a
mechanical effect, sound is essentially the passage of pressure fluctuations through
matter as the result of vibrational forces acting on that medium. Sound possesses
the attributes of wave phenomena, as do light and radio signals. But unlike its
electromagnetic counterparts, sound cannot travel through a vacuum. In Sylva
Sylvarum written in the early seventeenth century, Sir Francis Bacon deemed sound
to be one of the subtlest pieces of nature, but he complained, the nature of sound
in general hath been superficially observed. His accusation of superficiality from
the perspective of the mode viewpoint was justified for his time, not only for
acoustics, but also for nearly all branches of physical science. Frederick V. Hunt
(1905–1967), one of America’s greatest acoustical pioneers, pointed out that the
seeds of analytical self-consciousness were already there, however, and Bacon’s
libel against acoustics was eventually discharged through the flowering of a clearer
comprehension of the physical nature of sound.
Mode acoustics is vastly different from the field that existed in Bacon’s time
and even 20 years ago. It has grown to encompass the realm of ultrasonics and
infrasonics in addition to the audio range, as the result of applications in materials
science, medicine, dentistry, oceanology, marine navigation, communications,
petroleum and mineral prospecting, industrial processes, music and voice synthesis,
animal bioacoustics, and noise cancellation. Improvements are still being made
in the older domains of music and voice reproduction, audiometry, psychoacoustics,
speech analysis, and environmental noise control.
This text—aimed at science and engineering majors in colleges and universities,
principally undergraduates in the last year or two of their programs and graduation
students, as well as practitioners in the field—was written with the assumption that
the users of this text are sufficiently versed in mathematics up to and including the
level of differential and partial differential equations, and that they have taken the
sequence of undergraduate physics courses that satisfy engineering accreditation
criteria. It is my hope that a degree of mathematical elegance has been sustained
here, even with the emphasis on engineering and scientific applications. While
the use of SI units is stressed, very occasional references are made to physical parameters expressed in English (or Imperial) units. It is strenuously urged that
laboratory experience be included in the course (or courses) in which this text
is being used. The student of acoustics will thus obtain a far keener appreciation
of the topics covered in recitation classes when he or she gains hand on
experience in the use of sound—level meters, signal generators, frequency
analyzers, and other measurement tools.
Many of the later chapters in the text are self-contained in the sense that an
instructor may skip certain segments in order to concentrate on the agenda most
appropriate to the class. However, mastery of the materials in the earlier chapters,
namely, Chapters 1–6, is obviously requisite to understanding of the later chapters.
Chapters such as those dealing with musical instruments or underwater sound
propagation or the legal aspects of environmental noise can be skipped in order to
accommodate academic schedules or to allow concentration on certain topics of
greater interest to the instructor (and, hopefully, his or her class) such as ultrasound,
architectural acoustics, or other topics. Problems of different levels of difficulty
are included at the end of nearly all of the chapters. Many of the problems entail
the theoretical aspects of acoustics, but a number of practical questions have
also been included.
As an author, I hope that I have successfully met the challenge of providing
a mode, fairly comprehensive text in the field for the benefit of both students
and practitioners, whether they are scientists or engineers. In using parts of this
book in prepublication editions in teaching acoustics classes, I have benefited from
feedback and suggestions from my students. A number of them have proven to be
quite eagle-eyed, as they have supplied a continuous stream of recommendations
and corrections, even after the publication of the first edition. It is impossible to
acknowledge them all, but Gregory Miller and Jos?e Sinabaldi come to mind as
being among the most assiduous. A number of my colleagues and friends have
gone through the chapters of the first edition. The real genesis of the first edition
occurred when Harry Himmelblau saw the prepublication copy when I was a summer
visiting professor at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and he urged me to
consider publication. In particular I must acknowledge Paul Arveson, now retired
from the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock of Bethesda, Maryland, who
went through the first three chapters with a fine-toothed comb, M. G. Prasad of
Stevens Institute of Technology who made a number of extremely valuable suggestions
for Chapter 9 in instrumentation, and Edith Corliss who greatly encourage
me on Chapter 10 dealing with the mechanism of hearing. Dr. Zouhair Lazreq,
who did his postdoctorate under my tutelage, also looked over some of the chapters,
Martin Alexander has been helpful in obtaining illustrations for Chapter 9 in
both editions from Br?uel and Kj?r; Dr. Volker Irmer of Germany’s Federal Environmental
Agency introduced me to the European Union’s noise regulations and
other inteational codes, and Armand Leer arranged to have materials forwarded
from Eckel Corporation of Cambridge, Massachusetts. James E. West, formerly
of Lucent Bell Laboratories (and now at the Johns Hopkins University) and past
president (1998–1999) of the Acoustical Society of America, was instrumental in providing photographs of the anechoic chamber. I am also indebted to Caleb
Cochran of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Steve Lowe of the Seattle Symphony
Orchestra, Elizabeth Canada of theKennedy Center, Sandi Brown of the Minnesota
Orchestral Association, Rachelle B. Roe of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Thomas
D. Rossing of Northe Illinois University, Ann C. Perlman of the American Institute
of Physics, KarenWelty of Abbott Laboratories, Tom Radler of Hohner, Inc.,
and others, too many to list here, for their help in providing photographs, certain
figures, and/or permission to reproduce the figures.
I regarded the preparation of this second edition as a splendid opportunity to
update The Science and Applications of Acoustics. A number of features have
been added to this new edition. Besides the obvious updating of information on
acoustic research and applications throughout the text, a section on prosthetic
hearing devices was added to Chapter 10; and the original Chapter 17 was split
into two chapters, one covering music and music instrumentation and the other
dealing with audio processors and sound reproduction. The topic of ultrasound
has also been expanded to the extent that two chapters became necessary, with the
latter chapter treating the increasingly important topic of medical and industrial
applications. An introduction to nonlinear acoustics is provided in Chapter 21.
I also must take this opportunity to thank many of my fellow acousticians for
their comments and suggestions for the second edition. It is hoped that all of
the errors in the first edition has been weeded out and there are precious few, if
any, in this volume. Suggestions for improving the text have come from M. G.
Prasad, Stevens Institute of Technology; Yves Berthelot, Georgia Institute of
Technology; Mark Hamilton, University of Texas at Austin; Neville H. Fletcher,
Australian National University; Uwe Hansen, Indiana State; Frank J. Fahy,
University of Southhampton; Carleen M. Hutchins,Violin Family Association; and
others.
Springer-Verlag’s Dr. Hans Koelsch and Ronald Johnson served ably as the
editor and acquisitions editor, respectively.Komila Bhat supervised the editing process
and Natacha Menar proved to be instrumental in expediting this publication;
their contribution surely helped to improve this second edition. It was a pleasure
to work with them. I am still grateful for the past contributions of Dr. Thomas von
Foerster and Steven Pisano, who both worked with me at Springer-Verlag on the
first edition. Dr. Robert Beyer, the editor of this AIP series dealing with acoustics,
provided a great deal of encouragement and inspiration. He has my unbounded
admiration (and that of virtually every acoustician) for the range of his knowledge
and extraordinary wisdom. I deem it a rare privilege to know such a person.
In the preparation of the second edition, my chief source of inspiration and
support continues to come from my wife, Geri. My past and present works were
stimulated by the radiance of her presence.
Daniel R. Raichel
Fort Collins, Colorado