The sound power level is a physical quantity indispensable for evaluating the amount of sound energy radiated from electrical and mechanical apparatuses. The precise determination of the sound power level requires the qualification of the measurement environment, such as a hemi-anechoic room, by estimating the deviation of the sound pressure level from the inverse-square law. In this respect, Annex A of ISO 3745 specifies the procedure for room qualification and defines a tolerance limit for the directivity of the sound source, which is used for the qualification. However, it is impractical to prepare a special loudspeaker only for room qualification. Thus, we developed a simulation method to investigate the influence of the sound source directivity on the measured deviation of the sound pressure level from the inverse-square law by introducing a quantitative index for the influence of the directivity. In this study, type 4202 reference sound source by Brüel & Kjær was used as a directional sound source because it has been widely used as a reference standard for the measurement of sound power levels. We experimentally obtained the directivity of the sound source by measuring the sound pressure level over the measurement surface. Moreover, the proposed method was applied to the qualification of several hemi-anechoic rooms, and we discussed the availability of a directional sound source for the process. Analytical results showed that available reference sound sources may be used for the evaluation of hemi-anechoic rooms depending on the sound energy absorption coefficient of the inner wall, the directionality of the microphone traverse, and the size of the space to be qualified. In other words, the results revealed that a reference sound source that is once quantified by the proposed method can be used for qualifying hemi-anechoic rooms.

A new method for active suppression of reflected sound waves is proposed in this paper. The proposed control system is based on the state feedback control. FEM (Finite Element Method) was applied to represent the sound field under the system equations as proposed by Samejima et al. A new performance index was derived so as to minimize the sound intensity leaving a control region, which was set around the control source on a wall. On the basis of the system equations and the new performance index, an optimal feedback law governing suppression of waves reflected from the wall was derived. In order to evaluate the validity of the proposed method, computer simulations in one- and two-dimensional sound fields were executed. In a one-dimensional sound field, the time response was examined, and the distribution of the instantaneous sound intensity was evaluated in a two-dimensional sound field. The results showed that the reflected sound waves can be suppressed quite well in one-dimensional sound fields by using this method and that the proposed method can potentially suppress the reflected sound waves in the two-dimensional sound fields as well.