Constraining the minute amount of audible energy radiated from binary collisions of light plastic spheres in conditions of incomplete angular coverage of the measured pressure.
Usually, the energy released as air-coupled sound following a collision is dismissed as negligible. The goal of this Letter is to quantify the value of this small but measurable quantity, since it can be useful to impact studies. Measurements of sound radiation from binary collisions of polypropylene balls were performed in order to constrain the fraction of incident energy radiated as sound in air. In the experiments, one ball is released from rest, directly above a stationary target ball. The transient acoustic waveforms are detected by a microphone rotated about the impact point at a radius of 10 cm. The sound pressure was measured as a function of the polar angle θ (the azimuthal symmetry of the problem was verified by rotating the microphone in the horizontal plane). The angular pattern has two main lobes that are asymmetric with respect to the impact plane. This asymmetry is ascribable to interference and/or scattering effects. Gaps in the acoustic measurements at the "poles" (i.e., around 0° and 180°) pose a challenge similar to that of extrapolating the cosmic microwave background in the galactic "cut." The data was continued in the gaps by polynomial interpolation rather than least-squares fitting, a choice dictated by the accuracy of the reconstructed pattern. The acoustic energy radiated during the impact, estimated by multiplying the collision time by the sound intensity integrated over a spherical surface centered at the impact point, is calculated as four orders of magnitude smaller than the incident energy (0.23 μJ versus 1.6 mJ).
Andi
A
Petculescu
Joshua
J
Riner
D000162:Acoustics / Q000295:instrumentation; D000669:Amplifiers, Electronic; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009038:Motion; D010316:Particle Size; D011126:Polypropylenes; D011312:Pressure; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013016:Sound
D011126:Polypropylenes