Acoustic behaviour of high pressure air-filled porous media

This paper deals with the acoustic behaviour of porous media when the saturating fluid is high pressured. These observations are performed by ultrasonic transmission through a porous sample with variations of the static pressure of the saturating fluid. Previous works have experimentally demonstrated that a high frequency asymptotic equivalent fluid model allows to model the behaviour of such media for low pressure (between 0.2 and 6 bars). In this paper, in order to characterize high damping materials, measurements are performed for higher static pressure (up to 18 bars). It is shown that the behaviour of transmission coefficient and speed with pressure follows Biot’s theory. Moreover, measurements are dependant on temperature variations. Temperature variations have been accounted for in this study, but this does not explain entirely the high sensitivity of the transmission coefficient with static pressure. It remains that the mechanical properties of the porous medium vary strongly with the thermodynamic variables.