Experimental verification of the energy dissipation mechanism in acoustic dampers.

An experimental program is described which verifies the theoretical model that acoustic damping devices undergoing high intensity oscillations dissipate energy via jet kinetic losses. Pressure measurements within the damping devices and flow duct together with detailed surveys of the jet velocities provide the experimental confirmation. The theory accounts for duct flow effects, both steady and unsteady, as well as the jet dissipation. Discrepancies between theory and experiment can be traced to neglect of higher order terms or ignoring the difficult wall friction term in the case of the quarter-wave tube.