Pressure Loss in Ducts by Dissipative Splitter Silencers: Comparative Study of Standardized, Numerical and Experimental Results

Abstract

Dissipative splitter silencers are widely used in industry for the reduction of propagated sound waves in ducts. Even though these systems are effective from the acoustics point of view when they are properly designed, they also introduce a pressure loss in the system, due to the modification of the properties of the flow circulating inside the duct. This effect is not desired in some industrial applications, so it is necessary to be able to predict the pressure loss as precisely as possible to design silencers according to the needs. Nevertheless, the prediction made by standards are usually limited to given geometries or flow speed. In this work, we present a comparative study on the results obtained for the pressure loss by means of the standards ISO 14163 and VDI 1801-1, numerical simulations with the finite element method, and experimental measurements. Additionally, two different profile shapes and four input face velocities are tested in order to know the influence of these parameters in the variations of the flow and the accuracy of the prediction of the different methods.