For instruments like Guitars or Violins, special tonewoods are required to achieve the desired sound. In order to determine the acoustic properties of such tonewoods, instrument makers and merchants of tonewood rely on procedures that require a lot of experience in the field of psychoacoustics. But none of those procedures tends to collecting data for the comparison of different types of wood (Ziegenhals, 2008).
Modal Analysis is being used to determine the vibration frequencies, mode shapes and damping for the analysis of structural dynamics of a variety of supporting structures (Ewins, 2000). This method can also be used to examine the acoustic properties of tonewood, though it requires a lot of accuracy and susceptibility in order to obtain significant data. This study examines the possibility for an automation of this method by using a vibration calibrating system to identify the frequency response of wood samples and comparing them to the data which has been collected through modal analysis.
Keywords: acoustic wood, calibration
Authors
Tobias Bender
University for Sustainable Development Eberswalde
Lothar Clauder
Robert Krüger
Alexander Pfriem
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