Acoustic Simulations
ACTRAN Training - ACOUSTICS
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Introduction
 These slides present the ACOUSTICs materials, components and 
boundary conditions involved in a pure acoustic simulation.
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Content
 The FLUID Material
 The Finite Fluid Component
 The Infinite Fluid Component
 The Boundary Conditions
 Output quantities
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The Fluid Material (1)
 The Fluid material is the standard 
material used for defining both 
viscous and non viscous fluids related 
to an acoustic medium.
 The properties that define a Fluid
material are:
 Sound speed  
 default value: 340 m.s-1
 Fluid density 
 default value: 1.225kg.m-³
 Cp   
 default value: 1004
 Cv 
 default value: 716
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The Fluid Material (2)
 Syntax in the ACTRAN input file:
 Definition in ACTRAN/VI
BEGIN MATERIAL Id
FLUID
SOUND_SPEED value    
FLUID_DENSITY value
CP value
CV value
END MATERIAL Id
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The Fluid Material (3)
 The default values are provided for air at 15°C and 1atm;
 The default values are hardcoded in ACTRAN.
Properties Fields - Blank
Properties Fields - Filled
BEGIN MATERIAL 1
FLUID
END MATERIAL 1
Is equivalent to
BEGIN MATERIAL 1
FLUID
SOUND_SPEED 340
FLUID_DENSITY 1.225
CP 1004
CV 716
END MATERIAL 1
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Content
 The FLUID Material
 The Finite Fluid Component
 The Infinite Fluid Component
 The Boundary Conditions
 Output quantities
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The Finite Fluid Component (1)
 The Finite Fluid component is the standard 
component for modeling all type of finite acoustic 
media (including heavy fluids media).
Supported topologies
 Points to a valid acoustic Fluid material
 Unknowns: fluid pressure (1 dof/node) 
 Standard meshing criteria (without flow):
 6 to 10 linear elements per wavelength
 4 to 8 quadratic elements per wavelength
 These are just guidelines to insure a sufficient level 
of accuracy. This is very subjective….
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