A numerical and experimental validation of the room acoustics diffusion theory inside long rooms

Chiara Visentin (1) , Nicola Prodi (1) , Vincent Valeau (1) , Judicaël Picaut (2)

1 PPrime [Poitiers] - Institut Pprime [UPR 3346]
2 IFSTTAR/AME/LAE - Laboratoire d'Acoustique Environnementale

The paper focuses on the validation of the recently proposed room-acoustics diffusion theory by means of numerical simulations and experimental measurements. The analysis aims to verify the equation underlying the theory (Fick’s law of diffusion) which relates the energy density gradient and the sound intensity inside a room through a constant diffusion coefficient. In this work, the acoustic quantities are numerically/experimentally derived under stationary conditions, and their ratio is employed to estimate the effective value of the diffusion coefficient inside long rooms. The numerical study was carried out with particle-tracing simulations. The measurements were performed with a Microflown® three-dimensional sound intensity probe inside a 1:16 scale model of a long room, varying the absorption and the scattering properties at the boundaries. A comparison between numerical and experimental results is carried out with a least-square algorithm, showing a fair agreement between the diffusion coefficients estimated with the two methods. The results lead to the conclusion that the reverberant sound field inside long rooms can be described by a non-homogeneous diffusion process: the local diffusion coefficient is not a constant inside the room but increases with the distance from the source and depends on the acoustical properties of the room boundaries.

Mots clés: ACOUSTIQUE

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]; Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Chiara Visentin, Nicola Prodi, Vincent Valeau, Judicaël Picaut. A numerical and experimental validation of the room acoustics diffusion theory inside long rooms. 21st International Congress on Acoustics, Jun 2013, Montréal, Canada. 8p, ill., cartes, graphiques, bibliogr. ⟨hal-00845722⟩