Contribution
PTB’s new setup for testing the heavy soft impact source
* Presenting author
Abstract:
The heavy soft impact source is a rubber ball with a mass of about 1,5 kg. Dropped from a height of 1 m, this source serves as an excitation to measure the impact sound insulation in buildings. Therefore, the rubber ball is an absolute standard in a metrological sense, and its main properties are specified in ISO-standards. Since the heavy soft impact source may be used more frequently in the future, a device to test its properties has been set up at PTB. It consists of a single strain gauge sensor in combination with a bridge amplifier and an acoustic data acquisition and analysis system. The ball is dropped manually on an aluminium adapter plate with a diameter of 100 mm and a thickness of 10 mm. The presentation is focused on the characterisation of the measurement setup, the calibration of the sensor and the repeatability of the results. Test results with two relatively new rubber balls and one very old rubber ball are being presented.