Acoustic response of a sinusoidally perturbed hard-walled duct

Acoustic wave propagation in hard-walled ducts is of interest in many fields including vehicle design, musical instruments acoustics, and architectural and environmental noise-control. For the case of small sinusoidal perturbation of the cross-section, it is possible to derive simple though approximate analytical formulas of its plane wave acoustic reflection and transmission spectral response that resembles the optical situation of uniform Bragg gratings. The proof is given here, starting from the "horn equation" and then exploiting the coupled-modes theory. Examples of the results obtained with these analytical formulas are shown for some sinusoidally perturbed ducts and compared to results obtained through a numerical method, revealing a very good agreement. © 2013 Silvio Del Giudice and Giancarlo Bernasconi.