Customer Reviews

Foundations of Engineering Acoustics

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I work as acoustic consultant, primarily with noise and vibration simulation.

I recommend the book as it has helped me out on a few occasions where I needed to look into new things with which I had not previously worked. It is also useful when there is a need to reference matters you are familiar with, but want the detailed equations or the background assumptions restated.

Having to solve practical problems, I especially appreciate that the author includes references to other work and, more importantly lists `rules of thumbs' that lead to sensible designs. Such recommendations have saved valuable time and money for me.

So, the scope of the book goes beyond that of teaching. It is quite a useful book also for practical work.

This is Fahy's "Introductory" Acoustics text. He has several other publications in vibration and vibroacoustics (structural acoustics) that establish him as one of the more prolific current authors for acoustics curriculum.

As a graduate student, I find that Fahy's writing style really helps explain what is physically happening in basic acoustic scenarios, such as plane waves, spherical waves, scattering, refraction, reflection, sound in waveguides, sources of sound, etc. The writing is both interesting and fluent. In this manner, It is a nearly perfect companion text to other introductory texts who may favor a more equation-driven approach (such as the standards of Kinsler & Frey or Pierce). Fahy has some unique features in this book, including a list of possible experiments to demonstrate acoustic concepts (some experiments are mediocre, some are really good if you have an FFT analyzer handy).

That being said, the end-of-chapter questions are limited but thoughtful (usually fewer than 10 per chapter). There may be a slight favor towards structural acoustics rather than other fields. Notably absent are sections on hearing perception and applications in underwater acoustics. Again, no text can be perfect, but this is a great companion text to understand basic concepts in acoustics.

This textbook was helpful in communicating the basic principles of engineering acoustics. Several errors, (k^2 missing in numerator of equation 6.14, page 109) but generally a good reference when coupled with good teaching. Includes around 8-10 problems after each chapter with solutions in the back.