Development of a set of structural acoustic teaching demonstrations using a simply supported rectangular plate

As part of the Sound-Structure Interaction course, offered through the Penn State Graduate Program in Acoustics, a set of demonstrations was developed to help reinforce structural acoustics theory. A common test article, a simply supported plate, was developed for a set of four demonstrations. The simply supported plate was used to demonstrate the concepts of mobility functions, radiated sound directivity, fluid loading and acoustic transmission loss. A modal impact hammer, accelerometers, microphones, a sound level meter and a sound intensity probe were used in combination with National Instruments compactDAQ systems and LabVIEW software to develop these custom demonstrations. Basic theory and setup of the demonstrations are presented as well as links to the videos of the demonstrations themselves.