Spheroidal wave solutions for sound radiation problems in the near-field of planar structures

Current research in active noise control and in the reconstruction of vibrating sources often requires knowledge of the independent source-field components that best represent the complex acoustical transfer paths observed between a radiating structure and a given control or observation domain. In this paper, closed-form solutions are provided for the singular value expansion of the radiation operator that maps the boundary velocity of a baffled rectangular structure onto the acoustic pressure observed in the half-space domain over a hemi-spheroidal surface located at an arbitrary separation distance from the radiator, including in the near-field zone. Independent contributions of the evanescent and propagating wave components to the complex power are examined for a baffled beam when varying the frequency and the source-field distance parameter.