Yes / There is a considerable number of research publications on the characterization of porous media that is carried out in accordance with ISO 10534-2 (International Standards Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, 2001) and/or ISO 9053 (International Standards Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, 1991). According to the Web of Science(TM) (last accessed 22 September 2016) there were 339 publications in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America alone which deal with the acoustics of porous media. However, the reproducibility of these characterization procedures is not well understood. This paper deals with the reproducibility of some standard characterization procedures for acoustic porous materials. The paper is an extension of the work published by Horoshenkov, Khan, Bécot, Jaouen, Sgard, Renault, Amirouche, Pompoli, Prodi, Bonfiglio, Pispola, Asdrubali, Hübelt, Atalla, Amédin, Lauriks, and Boeckx [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 122(1), 345-353 (2007)]. In this paper, independent laboratory measurements were performed on the same material specimens so that the naturally occurring inhomogeneity in materials was controlled. It also presented the reproducibility data for the characteristic impedance, complex wavenumber, and for some related pore structure properties. This work can be helpful to better understand the tolerances of these material characterization procedures so improvements can be developed to reduce experimental errors and improve the reproducibility between laboratories.

This thesis was conducted on behalf of Butong AB, who wanted to test and develop an environmental friendly, so called green sound barrier, which combines both art and science.Different configurations of the product were proposed by the company with various filling materials, as it was predicted that the filling materials would be the main sound absorbent among all parts of the structure.The thesis work started by selecting the best of the proposed fillings which could be of interest - that is those which were expected to have high sound absorption coefficients. The selection process was based on experience, reading and advice. The main idea behind the selection process was saving cost for the company as well as effort.Impedance tube method was used for performing the measurements on samples of the green sound barriers, in order to calculate the acoustical properties of each material and every construction, as it was considerably reliable, cheap and fast to use.The measurements were done according to a combination between standards described in ISO 10534-2:1998 and ASTM E2611-09, for performing test measurements using the impedance tube.This master thesis gives an explanation of the predicted absorption characteristics of the green sound barriers including the usage of different fillings, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of using it in real life applications.