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APPENDIX C
Decibel Scale
The decibel is a unit of measurement for vibrations (and other phenomena),
and is it defined
1
as
(C.1)
or
(C.2)
where P is a power or a power-like quantity, P
ref
is a reference quantity hav-
ing the same engineering units as P, A is an amplitude-like quantity and A
ref
is a reference quantity having the same engineering units as A. Examples of
P are electrical power in watts, system energy, acoustic intensity in watts/m
2
;
examples of A are voltage, displacement, velocity, and acceleration. The des-
ignation dB does not pertain to a particular physical quantity and therefore, it
is not a physical unit in the ordinary sense. It simply indicates the relative
magnitudes of two like quantities as shown in Eqs. (C.1) and (C.2).
The main reason for the introduction and use of the decibel is to com-
press logarithmically very large and very small numbers into a more man-
ageable scale and to provide a convenient manner in which to talk about them.
From Eq. (C.2), we see that for amplitude-like quantities each factor of 10 in-
crease with respect to the reference quantity corresponds to 20 dB, whereas a
decrease by a factor of 10 corresponds to 20 dB. Thus, 60 dB means that an
amplitude-like quantity is 1000 times larger than the reference quantity and
60 dB indicates that it is 1000 times smaller. Two ratios that are of special
interest are A/A
ref
and A/A
ref
1/ , which correspond to 3 dB and
3 dB, respectively. For power-like quantities, P/P
ref
2 and P/P
ref
1/2
also correspond to 3 dB and 3 dB, respectively.
12
12
L
A
20 log
10
A
A
ref
dB
L
P
10 log
10
P
P
ref
dB
1
“Acoustics—Expressions of Physical and Subjective Magnitudes of Sound or Noise in the Air,”
ISO 131, International Standards Organization, Geneva, Switzerland (1979).