Sound transmission between rooms coupled through partition with elastically restrained edges

Sound transmission between rooms is often encountered for the acoustic design and noise control engineers. A clear understanding on the acoustical behavior of rectangular cavities connected by flexible panel structure can be of the fundamental significance. In this paper, sound transmission between rooms through the flexible partition with its edges elastically restrained is investigated. Both the translational and rotational springs are assumed along each panel edge to simulate the structural boundary conditions. The energy variational formulations in conjunction with Rayleigh-Ritz procedure are employed for this structural-acoustic coupling system modeling with the improved Fourier series constructed as the admissible functions, in which the supplementary terms are introduced to overcome potential discontinuities associated with the spatial derivatives of the conventional Fourier series on the panel-cavity interface as well as the panel elastic edge supports. Numerical examples are then presented to demonstrate the reliability and effectiveness of the current model through the comparison with the predicted data obtained by Finite Element Analysis using NASTRAN. Effect of the position and boundary restraining condition of flexible partition on the sound transmission characteristics of coupled rooms is analyzed in detail. Finally, some useful and interesting findings from this work are given in the conclusion section.