Les Matériaux Actifs à Propriétés Acoustiques Variables

This work deals with the concept of active materials with variable acoustic properties, dedicated to room acoustics applications. This concept is based on an acoustic impedance active control principle by hybrid motionnal feedback, applied on an electroacoustic transducer. This hybrid feedback associates a motionnal feedback, obtained by an electric impedance bridge, and a pressure feedback, obtained by a microphone placed in the neighbourhood of the actuator. After the concept of active material has been modelized and tested experimentally with single moving-coil loudspeaker, this principle is extended to the concept of active wall. A prototype of active wall with active movingcoil loudspeakers is modelized and tested, in order to find specifications for a specific electroacoustic transducer dedicated to the « active materials » application. This work leads to the implementation of the isodynamic transducer, for which a numeric model is elaborated. The study of the electroacoustic behaviour of this transducer underlines several problems, likely to limit its performances as active material with variable acoustic properties, and lead us to develop a numeric tool for sizing the transducer for this application. On the basis of this study, many prototypes are build in order to, in one hand, validate the numeric model, and in the other hand, point out the limitations of the transducer to find practical solutions to improve its performances. The results obtained with such transducers as active materials, obtained for plane waves and normal incidence, help us estimate future works for the achievement of active materials with variable acoustic properties; the isodynamic principle seems to be the most suitable for this concept, in terms of results as well as in terms of product costs