Application of Paper Folding Technique to Three-Dimensional Space Sound Absorber with Permeable Membrane: Case Studies of Trial Productions

Abstract

The authors propose a space sound absorber made of a permeable membrane (PM), including woven or non-woven fabrics in three-dimensional shapes, e.g., cylinder, rectangle, etc. The proposed absorbers are examined by experimental measurements and boundary element analyses, and it is found that they can be effectively used especially for middle and high frequencies. In order to develop these absorbers for wider applications, it would be desirable to give them additional values and functions, particularly to elaborate on their design. Supposing that they could also be used for lighting equipment, such as lampshades as one of the applications, pilot studies on pseudo-cylindrical, and pseudo-spherical PM space absorbers with uneven surfaces produced by paper-folding (origami technique) are carried out. The pseudo-cylindrical concave curves (PCCC) shell shape has been proven as a suitable form for a lampshade, and the pseudo-spherical concave curves (PSCC) shell shape is an application of PCCC. In this paper, PCCC and PSCC shell shapes are applied to three-dimensional PM space absorbers, and trials are conducted using PMs selected by flow resistance measurements and preliminary simulations. The sound absorptivity of the specimens is measured in a reverberation chamber, and their absorptivity is 0.6 (PCCC case) and 0.4 (PSCC case) at mid-high frequencies.