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Acoustic Theory
Acoustic theory
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Classical acoustic theory derives from
fluid mechanics, and centers on the
mathematical description of
sound waves. See
acoustics
for the engineering approach.
In approaching the description of a sound wave the
mathematics never give the whole story. The subtleties of
thermodynamics are difficult enough to recommend a gradual familiarization
with some related problems of vibration such as arise in mechanical sound
production:
motion of a spring,
vibration of a string,
equation of motion,
harmonic.
Besides the math tools, the preceding examples help inform
the beginner's physical intuition with analogies to the periodic compression
domains.
The propagation of sound waves in air can be modeled by an
equation of motion and an equation of continuity. With some simplifications,
they can be given as follows:
-
-
where
is the acoustic pressure and
is the acoustic fluid velocity vector,
 is the
vector of spatial coordinates x,y,z, t is the time,
ρ0 is the static density of air and c is the speed of sound in
air.
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