Double-tuning the inlet and outlet extension lengths of a family of straight-flow expansion chamber mufflers for broadband attenuation

This work presents a generalized end-correction expression for double-tuning the extensions of the concentric inlet and concentric/offset outlet ports of a family of straight-flow circular and elliptical expansion chamber mufflers as a function of geometrical parameters, which include the wall-thickness, ratio of chamber-to-port diameter, aspect-ratio, and the offset distance along the major-axis. To this end, first, the transmission loss (TL) performance of configurations with non-tuned extensions given by half and quarter chamber lengths at the inlet and outlet, respectively, was determined using 3-D FEA, which accounted for the multi-dimensional acoustic field at area-discontinuities. The effective lengths of the quarter-wave resonators at the inlet and outlet and the corresponding end-corrections were computed from the first and second resonance frequency peaks, respectively. The 3-D FEA showed that by considering geometric length equal to the effective inlet and outlet length, three-fourths of the troughs in the TL spectrum were nullified, thereby delivering a broadband attenuation. The 3-D effects were incorporated into the 1-D model through end-correction lengths. Parametric studies were conducted to examine the variation of end-corrections with different geometrical parameters, while the accuracy of the generalized end-correction expression was demonstrated by comparison against previous results.