Product Description

The classic acoustics reference! This widely-used book offers a clear treatment of the fundamental principles underlying the generation, transmission, and reception of acoustic waves and their application to numerous fields. The authors analyze the various types of vibration of solid bodies and the propagation of sound waves through fluid media.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #72390 in Books
• Published on: 1999-12-30
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 560 pages

The publisher, John Wiley & Sons
A clear treatment of the fundamental principles underlying the generation, transmission, and reception of acoustic waves and their application to numerous fields. Analyzes the various types of vibration of solid bodies and the propagation of sound waves through fluid media. The third edition features discussions of antiresonance concert hall acoustics, detection theory, canonical equations, normal mode propagation in the ocean, and environmental acoustics. Material on absorption, hearing, architectural acoustics, and underwater sound has been expanded and updated.

Customer Reviews

Good book on the mathematics of acoustics for engineers
This book is aimed squarely at engineering students who want to learn the mathematics of acoustics. There is very little in the realm of standing back and asking "So what does this all mean?". From the very first chapter the author dives into deriving equations that use calculus, Laplace transforms, the Fourier series and transform, circuit analysis, digital filters, and the Z- transform as well as some differential equations. There are few examples in the book, but there are problem sets that expect you to understand the theory and math well enough to apply it numerically with more intuitive knowledge than is presented. It can be done, but you'll have to read carefully when doing the exercises to figure out how to get from A to B. If you are interested in acoustics this is probably an essential reference pertaining to the mathematical aspects of the science, but you'll need other books to get the big picture. I'd recommend the old Schaum's Outline of Acoustics by Seto as a companion to this book since it has lots of examples. Unfortunately, it is out of print and you'll probably have to hunt for it.

An excellent textbook
This is a classic engineering text on acoustics for upper division college students. It first appeared in 1950. And now it is back fifty years later in a fourth edition. In the meantime, the original two authors have passed away. However, Coppens and Sanders have done a fine job in keeping the book up-to-date.

Plenty of exercises have been added, and answers to many odd-numbered problems are in the back of the book. I think it is an excellent introduction to the field (yes, I expect you to have studied calculus and differential equations as an underclassman). It's my favorite of the classic engineering acoustics textbooks.

Two new chapters have been added in this edition, one on nonlinear acoustics and the other on shock waves. That's a very good idea. If I were teaching an acoustics class with an earlier edition of the book, I'd refer students to Landau Volume 6 (Fluid Mechanics) to get some of this missing information.

Actually, I wish the authors had added a couple more chapters, one on ultrasonics and another on instruments of music. That still would not cover all of acoustics, but I feel these topics are fairly important.

Anyway, I really like the book, and I'd be happy to teach a class using it.

Not an introductory text
This text in not an introductory work, it is geared toward upper division college or graduate level engineering work. By this I am referring to the math level in the book. If you are not willing to work with partial differential equations, integrals, dot products, cross products and dell operators stay away from this book, it is intended for engineering students and not for audio, broadcast, or film students looking for a greater understanding of sound/acoustics.

Here is a list of the chapters:
Fundamentals of vibration; Transverse motion - the vibrating string; Vibrations of bars; The two-dimensional wave equation: vibrations of memberanes and plates; The acoustic wave equation and simple solutions; Transmission phenomena; Absorption and attenuation of sound waves in fluids; Radiation and reception of acoustic waves; Pipes, cavities, and waveguides; resonators, ducts, and filters; Noise, signal, detection, hearing, and speech; Environmental acoustics; Architectural acoustics; Transduction; Underwater acoustics.