Development of a hand-held sensor probe for detection of sound components radiated from a specific device using surface intensity measurements

In this paper, a hand-held sensor probe is developed for surface intensity measurements. The sensor probe is composed of a 1/2-in. condenser microphone and a lightweight accelerometer of 1 g (=10−3 kg) which are connected with a vibration damper made of silicon rubber. The reliable measurement range of the sensor probe is examined and shown to be 100 Hz to7 kHz for sound and vibration. The precision of intensity measurements is confirmed by experiments in noisy environment. The precision is shown to be less than 3 dB for a random noise environment when the S/N is greater than −10 dB and for pure tone environment when the S/N is greater than −5 dB. The sensor probe is applied to determine the sound power level of a hard disc drive unit of a personal computer in an office setting. Good agreement is obtained for A-weighted sound power levels determined by the ISO method.