An alternative method is proposed in this paper, for measuring the normal-incidence sound absorption coefficient of underwater acoustic material using the pulse separation technique. The mea- suring system consists of an impedance tube with a low-frequency projector located at the bottom of the tube as the sound transmit- ter and four hydrophones flush mounted into the tube wall. Based on the inverse filter principle, a single plane damped sine pulse wave can be obtained in the tube. The distance between the hydro- phone and the specimen should be large enough to separate the incident pulse and the reflected pulse in the upper stream of the sample. When compared with the traditional transfer function approach, the proposed method can also provide reliable results in a low frequency range between 500 and 2000 Hz. However, the accuracy of the measurement may still be affected by the lim- ited frequency band response of the PZT sound transmitter.
The lowest measuring frequency for the traditional underwater acoustic pulse tube method is usually higher than 1000 Hz, limited by the tube length.