EXPERIMENTS ON A COMPRESSED-AIR LOUDSPEAKER

This work describes the development, construction, theoretical analysis and experimental evaluation of a novel type of electropneumatic sound source. The source has been specifically developed with a view to its application in active noise control systems applied in hostile environments, such as those found in the exhaust systems of gas turbines and internal combustion engines. This need arises in view of the relative fragility and large physical size of conventional loudspeakers and the high degree of non-linearity of existing electropneumatic transducers. In the new design a gas bearing is used to support the friction free motion of a sliding plate which is used to modulate the supply of compressed air. The sliding plate is driven by an electrodynamic vibrator. Experimental results demonstrate that this arrangement reduces harmonic distortion to at least 20 dB below the fundamental driving frequency for most operating conditions. In a companion paper a theoretical analysis of the transducer is presented by Chapman and Glendinning which enables predictions to be made of the acoustic volume velocity (source strength) produced by the transducer as a function of the upstream pressure and displacement of the sliding valve. The predictions of this theoretical model are found to be in good agreement with experimental results. © 1990.