Dual surface beamforming and acoustical holography for sound field visualization in reverberant environments

Near-field acoustical holography is a technique that has been widely used to visualize noise sources from pressure measurements in spaces that can be assumed to be anechoic or semi-anechoic. Previously, a dual surface acoustical holography procedure based on making measurements on two surfaces between the source and a reflecting surface was introduced to remove the effects of reverberation. Little work has been performed in which beamforming has been used to visualize sources based on dual surface, near-field measurements in a reverberant environment: such a procedure is described here. Because many practical measurement environments are not completely anechoic, the source resolution accuracy of dual surface acoustical holography and beamforming procedures in reverberant environments is compared here by using numerical simulations. It has been found that dual surface acoustical holography provides the clearest representation of the source location when sound waves radiating from the source and the reflected waves are propagating in the opposite directions and when the measurement surfaces are conformal with the source geometry. However, it has also been found that dual surface beamforming provides more consistent source resolution performance regardless of the relative direction of wave propagation of the source and reflected waves.