Sound transmission through duct walls

Acoustic "breakout" and "breakin" through duct wails had, until the late 19 70s, been a rather neglected topic of research, particularly in the field o f heating, ventilating and air-conditioning ducts. Since then, interest has grown and many publications have appeared in which predictive methods have been reported. Research in this area, especially that which has been condu cted over the past two decades, is reviewed in this paper. Efforts are made to identify the main physical processes involved and to present some relev ant published data, rather than to give a finely detailed, comprehensive, a ccount of this research. Some comments are made concerning the possible dir ection of future research. (C) 2001 Academic Press.