Jie Pan
Dept. of Mech. Eng., Univ. of Western Australia, Nedlands, WA 6009, Australia
The reverberation time of a room is related to the ratio between the power flow into the walls and the total sound energy in the room. If the walls of the room in constructed by flexible structures, this power flow can be determined by the interaction between the sound waves in the room and structural waves in the walls. In this paper, the power flow from the sound field into one flexible wall is calculated in the whole frequency range. The characteristics of the power flow is demonstrated and its relation with the reverberation time in the room is discussed. The sound absorption characteristics of the modally reactive and locally reactive boundaries are also compared.