Physical Approach to Engineering Acoustics

Book excerpt: This textbook presents the fundamentals of engineering acoustics and examines in depth concepts within the domain that apply to reducing noise, measuring noise, and designing microphones and loudspeakers. The book particularly emphasizes the physical principles used in designing miniature microphones. These devices are used in billions of electronic products, most visibly, cell phones and hearing aids, and enable countless other applications. Distinct from earlier books on this topic that take the view of the electrical engineer analyzing mechanical systems using electric circuit analogies. This text uses Newtonian mechanics as a more appropriate paradigm for analyzing these mechanical systems and in so doing provides a more direct method of modeling. Written at a level appropriate for upper-division undergraduate courses, and enhanced with end-of-chapter problems and MatLab routines, the book is ideal as a core text for students interested in engineering acoustics in ME, EE, and physics programs, as well as a reference for engineers and technicians working in the huge global industry of miniature microphone design.