physical acoustics

The mission of the Physical Acoustics Group is to study fundamental physical and acoustical processes and to utilize our understanding of those processes to develop novel techniques and products that are valuable for scientific measurement and applications to military systems and to industrial and commercial products. These efforts include collaboration between ARL staff and graduate students, since our mission includes the development of the talent base which will accelerate the transition of these advances from the laboratory to our customers and will educate the next generation of inventors.

Work done by the group ranges from modeling and measuring the effects of molecular agitation on low-noise sensors to the investigation of thermoacoustic efficiency in intense sound fields. While working from strong foundations in physical theory, the emphasis is on translating physics to hardware through a wide range of prototyping facilities and ARL shop facilities.

Research areas include:

• Thermoacoustic refrigeration
• Thermoacoustic energy conversion
• Acoustic gas-contaminant analysis
• Basic sensor physics
• Fundamental noise mechanisms and sensor limitations
• Electroacoustic reciprocity calibration
• Adaptive sensors
• Novel acoustic transduction mechanisms and devices
• Acoustical determination of elastic properties of solids