Acoustic theory is the field relating to mathematical description of sound waves. It is derived from fluid dynamics. See acoustics for the engineering approach.
The propagation of sound waves in a fluid (such as air) can be modeled by an equation of motion (conservation of momentum) and an equation of continuity (conservation of mass). With some simplifications, in particular constant density, they can be given as follows:
The acoustic wave equation is a combination of these two sets of balance equations and can be expressed as
and the momentum balance and mass balance are expressed as
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The derivations of the above equations for waves in an acoustic medium are given below.
The equations for the conservation of linear momentum for a fluid medium are
We make several assumptions to derive the momentum balance equation for an acoustic medium. These assumptions and the resulting forms of the momentum equations are outlined below.
In acoustics, the fluid medium is assumed to be Newtonian. For a Newtonian fluid, the deviatoric stress tensor is related to the velocity by
where μ is the shear viscosity and λ is the bulk viscosity.
The equations for the conservation of momentum may then be written as
For most acoustics problems we assume that the flow is irrotational, that is, the vorticity is zero. In that case
and the momentum equation reduces to
Another frequently made assumption is that effect of body forces on the fluid medium is negligible. The momentum equation then further simplifies to
Additionally, if we assume that there are no viscous forces in the medium (the bulk and shear viscosities are zero), the momentum equation takes the form
and
Then the momentum equation can be expressed as
Since the fluctuations are assumed to be small, products of the fluctuation terms can be neglected (to first order) and we have
The momentum equation then becomes
The equation for the conservation of mass in a fluid volume (without any mass sources or sinks) is given by
The equation for the conservation of mass for an acoustic medium can also be derived in a manner similar to that used for the conservation of momentum.
From the assumption of small disturbances we have
and
Then the mass balance equation can be written as
If we neglect higher than first order terms in the fluctuations, the mass balance equation becomes
Next we assume that the medium is homogeneous, i.e.,
Then the mass balance equation takes the form
In order to close the system of equations we need an equation of state for the pressure. To do that we assume that the medium is an ideal gas and all acoustic waves compress the medium in an adiabatic and reversible manner. The equation of state can then be expressed in the form of the differential equation:
where cp is the specific heat at constant pressure, cv is the specific heat at constant volume, and c is the wave speed. The value of γ is 1.4 if the acoustic medium is air.
For small disturbances
where c0 is the speed of sound in the medium.
Therefore,
The balance of mass can then be written as
The equations for the conservation of momentum may then be written as
In terms of components, these three equations for the conservation of momentum in cylindrical coordinates are
The equation for the conservation of mass can similarly be written in cylindrical coordinates as
The acoustic equations for the conservation of momentum and the conservation of mass are often expressed in time harmonic form (at fixed frequency). In that case, the pressures and the velocity are assumed to be time harmonic functions of the form
where ω is the frequency. Substitution of these expressions into the governing equations in cylindrical coordinates gives us the fixed frequency form of the conservation of momentum
and the fixed frequency form of the conservation of mass
In the special case where the field quantities are independent of the z-coordinate we can eliminate vr,vθ to get
Assuming that the solution of this equation can be written as
we can write the partial differential equation as
The left hand side is not a function of θ while the right hand side is not a function of r. Hence,
where α2 is a constant. Using the substitution
we have
The equation on the left is the Bessel equation which has the general solution
where Jα is the cylindrical Bessel function of the first kind and Aα,Bα are undetermined constants. The equation on the right has the general solution
where Cα,Dα are undetermined constants. Then the solution of the acoustic wave equation is
Boundary conditions are needed at this stage to determine α and the other undetermined constants.