Application of BEM (boundary element method)-based acoustic holography to radiation analysis of sound sources with arbitrarily shaped geometries

A method employing holograms that conform with arbitrarily shaped sources has been developed for enhancing conventional near-field acoustic holography, which has been limited to sources with simple geometries, e.g., planar or cylindrical surfaces. Four holography transformation algorithms have been developed, based on acoustic holography theory and the boundary element method (BEM). Singular value decomposition (SVD) has been incorporated into the algorithms in order to alleviate the ill-posed nature frequently encountered in backward reconstruction of a field. A pulsating sphere, a cylinder with spherical endcaps, and a vibrating piston set in a rigid sphere have been adopted in a numerical simulation for verifying the algorithms. Satisfactory agreement has been achieved between the holographically transformed results and the analytical solutions.