The jump phenomenon effect on the sound absorption of a nonlinear panel absorber and sound transmission loss of a nonlinear panel backed by a cavity

Theoretical analysis of the nonlinear vibration effects on the sound absorption of a panel absorber and sound transmission loss of a panel backed by a rectangular cavity is herein presented. The harmonic balance method is employed to derive a structural acoustic formulation from two-coupled partial differential equations representing the nonlinear structural forced vibration and induced acoustic pressure; one is the well-known von Karman’s plate equation and the other is the homogeneous wave equation. This method has been used in a previous study of nonlinear structural vibration, in which its results agreed well with the elliptic solution. To date, very few classical solutions for this nonlinear structural-acoustic problem have been developed, although there are many for nonlinear plate or linear structural-acoustic problems. Thus, for verification purposes, an approach based on the numerical integration method is also developed to solve the nonlinear structural-acoustic problem. The solutions obtained with the two methods agree well with each other. In the parametric study, the panel displacement amplitude converges with increases in the number of harmonic terms and acoustic and structural modes. The effects of excitation level, cavity depth, boundary condition, and damping factor are also examined. The main findings include the following: (1) the well-known “jump phenomenon” in nonlinear vibration is seen in the sound absorption and transmission loss curves; (2) the absorption peak and transmission loss dip due to the nonlinear resonance are significantly wider than those in the linear case because of the wider resonant bandwidth; and (3) nonlinear vibration has the positive effect of widening the absorption bandwidth, but it also degrades the transmission loss at the resonant frequency.