A comparative study on acoustic damping induced by half-wave, quarter-wave, and Helmholtz resonators

The damping characteristics of three-type resonators, a half-wave, a quarter-wave, and a Helmholtz resonator are studied experimentally by adopting linear acoustic test. A quantitative acoustic property of sound absorption coefficient in a model enclosure with the resonators is measured and thereby, the acoustic-damping capacity of a resonator is characterized. For a comparative study on acoustic damping, the damping capacity of a half-wave resonator is compared with that of the other resonators. A half-wave and a quarter-wave resonators have the same damping mechanism, but a quarter-wave resonator has much larger damping capacity than a half-wave resonator with the same diameter of a single resonator. It is found that shorter length of a resonator has the advantage of longer one with respect to the damping capacity. The damping capacity of a Helmholtz resonator increases with cavity volume and does as the orifice length decreases. A Helmholtz resonator has the highest damping capacity of three-type resonators and a half-wave resonator has the lowest. Besides, a Helmholtz resonator requires the smallest number of resonators for optimal damping. The design criterion of each resonator on the optimal damping is provided by the normalized parameter of open-area ratio and the similarity behavior for the optimal damping is observed for various enclosure diameters. (C) 2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.