US Government As Represented by the Secretary of the Army

Christian G Reiff

Bruce T Benwell

Harold Boesch, Jr

An apparatus for generating an acoustic signal which has a dielectric substrate having opposed first and second sides. A pair of electrodes are mounted on the first surface of the substrate so that the electrodes are spaced apart from each other. A high voltage power source is electrically connected to the electrodes to produce a high voltage electric potential between the electrodes and this high voltage electric potential is less than a level sufficient to create a surface arc discharge along the first surface of the dielectric substrate. An electrical conductor strip is mounted to the second side of the substrate. A trigger signal circuit then applies a trigger voltage signal to either the electrical connector strip or one of the electrodes which varies the electric field between the electrodes in an amount sufficient to ionize air adjacent one of the electrodes and create a surface arc discharge along the first surface of the dielectric between the electrodes which generates the acoustic impulse as a byproduct of the discharge.

Apparatus for generating an acoustic signal

An apparatus and method are provided for high intensity acoustic test cells that employ the Helmholtz resonator principle, incorporating at least one moderately-sized volume or test cell that is tunable to a given infrasonic to low-sonic frequency and generates sound of high intensity with very pure sinusoidal waveforms in this test cell or volume, by varying the geometry of a port which is connected to the test volume and open to either atmosphere or a second or input volume and by introducing to the test volume or the input volume a driving acoustic signal at the given tuned frequency. The apparatus and method are used for testing or performing experiments on materials, structures, devices, products, biological entities or humans at high acoustic intensities and frequencies in the low-sonic to infrasonic ranges.

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Arlington, VA, United States of America

Christian G Reiff