,__....aY ,t,:...l _..s.

Determination of Sound Power of a Noise Source

Objective
The principal objective of this lab is to introduce students to standard methods of estimating the sound power radiated
by a noise source. Students will be trained to perform measurements according to ISO standards.

Background
The sound power is given by the integral of the normal component of sound intensity over an imaginary enclosing
surface. The source sound power W is given by
W =

S
I
n
. dS
where I
n
is the component of the sound intensity vector normal to the measurement surface (which varies with position
on the surface) and S represents the total measurement surface enclosing the source. The approximation used in the
anechoic chamber method is
W =
i

p
i
2
/
0
c S
i

in which i indicates the measurement position on segment i having area S
i
.
The ISO standard ISO 3744 provides the methodology of determining the sound power levels of a noise source using
sound pressure levels.

Measurement and Calculations:



1. Calibrate the first microphone by changing its sensitivity until you read 94dB at 1000Hz. The sensitivities of
the other microphones are already preset in the software. The sensititvites of other microphones are as follows:
Mic 1 Mic 2 Mic 3 Mic 4 Mic 5 Mic 6 Mic 7 Mic 8
32 32 50 35 32 32 32
2. Measure out and mark the microphone positions 1 - 8 cube.(d = 1 m)
3. Measure the background noise using the first microphone for 10s in dB(A). This is L
p
. The background noise
is assumed the same at all other microphones.
4. Turn on the sound source.

,__....aY ,t,:...l _..s.



5. Repeat sound level measurements at each position with sound source running. The measurement period should
be either 30s or a typical period of operation of the source. This is L
pN
. Record the readings in the following
table
Mic 1 Mic 2 Mic 3 Mic 4 Mic 5 Mic 6 Mic 7 Mic 8
250 Hz
500 Hz
1000 Hz
2000 Hz

6. K
1
= -10*log(1-10
-0.1L
) is a correction matrix for background noise, where L = L
pN
- L
p

7. Calculate the corrected sound pressure level, L
pN
- K
1
.
8. Calculate the sound pressure level averaged over the measurement surface,

=

N
L
p
pN
N
L
10 /
10
1
log 10
9. Calculate the sound power level, L
w
= L
p
+ 10*log(S), where S = the area of the measurement envelope.
10. Calculate the overall sound power level of the frequency bands components

=

f
L
wO
w
L
10 /
10 log 10
where f denotes the frequency bands.

11. The following MATLAB code does the calculations described in steps 6 9. Write down the code while filling
in the spaces
S = ; % Surface area
N = 8; % Number of microphones
LpN = [ ]; % N Mic SPL in 4 bands
Lpb = [ ]; % Background noise in 4 bands
Lpbb = repmat(Lpb,N,1); % Background noise matrix
delL = LpN-Lpbb;
K1 = 10*log10(1-10.^(-delL/10)); % Background noise correction
LpC = LpN-K1; % Corrected SPLs
x1 = 10.^(LpC/10); % Exponent
Lp = 10*log10(sum(x1)/N);
Lw = Lp + 10*log10(S); % Calculate Lw
bar(Lw); % Plot Lp in a bar chart
set(gca,'XTickLabel',['0.25';'0.5';'1.0';'2.0']);
xlabel 'kHz'; ylabel 'L_w dBA';
LwOverall = % The overall sound power level

12. The calibrated sound power level of this source is shown in the following table. Discuss the sources of error.
Sound Power Level dB re 10
-12
W
250 Hz 76.8
500 Hz 77.2
1000 Hz 80.1
2000 Hz 82.6