Study on acoustical properties of sintered bronze porous material for transient exhaust noise of pneumatic system

A novel approach is presented to study the acoustical properties of sintered bronze material, especially used to suppress the transient noise generated by the pneumatic exhaust of pneumatic friction clutch and brake (PFC/B) systems. The transient exhaust noise is impulsive and harmful due to the large sound pressure level (SPL) that has high-frequency. In this paper, the exhaust noise is related to the transient impulsive exhaust, which is described by a one-dimensional aerodynamic model combining with a pressure drop expression of the Ergun equation. A relation of flow parameters and sound source is set up. Additionally, the piston acoustic source approximation of sintered bronze silencer with cylindrical geometry is presented to predict SPL spectrum at a far-field observation point. A semi-phenomenological model is introduced to analyze the sound propagation and reduction in the sintered bronze materials assumed as an equivalent fluid with rigid frame. Experiment results under different initial cylinder pressures are shown to corroborate the validity of the proposed aerodynamic model. In addition, the calculated sound pressures according to the equivalent sound source are compared with the measured noise signals both in time-domain and frequency-domain. Influences of porosity of the sintered bronze material are also discussed.