Effects of prestress on the acoustic behavior of panels

The vibrational and acoustical behavior of one‐ and two‐dimensional walls is examined, in the presence of a constant compressive prestress. It is shown that the resonance frequencies are lowered, and that the critical frequency is raised, by the presence of the prestress. Further, a mass‐law approximation is derived for the transmission loss, and it is shown to give higher values of the transmission loss than are found for an unstressed panel.