Helmholtz Resonance

A Helmholtz resonator or Helmholtz oscillator is a container of gas (usually air) with

an open hole (or neck or port). A volume of air in and near the open hole vibrates
because of the 'springiness' of the air inside. A common example is an empty bottle:
the air inside vibrates when you blow across the top, as shown in the diagram at left.
(It's a fun experiment, because of the surprisingly low and loud sound that results.)
Some small whistles are Helmholtz oscillators. The air in the body of a guitar acts
almost like a Helmholtz resonator*. An ocarina is a slightly more complicated
example, because for the higher notes it has several holes. Loudspeaker enclosures
often use the Helmholtz resonance of the enclosure to boost the low frequency
response. Here we analyse this oscillation, informally at first. Later, we derive the
equation for the frequency of the Helmholtz resonance.

The vibration here is due to the 'springiness' of air: when you compress it, its pressure
increases and it tends to expand back to its original volume. Consider a 'lump' of air at
the neck of the bottle (shaded in the middle diagrams and in the animation below). The
air jet can force this lump of air a little way down the neck, thereby compressing the
air inside. That pressure now drives the 'lump' of air out but, when it gets to its
original position, its momentum takes it on outside the body a small distance. This
rarifies the air inside the body, which then sucks the 'lump' of air back in. It can thus
vibrate like a mass on a spring (diagram at right). The jet of air from your lips is
capable of deflecting alternately into the bottle and outside, and that provides the
power to keep the oscillation going.

Now let's get quantitative:

First of all, we'll assume that the wavelength of the sound produced is much longer than the
dimensions of the resonator. For a typical drink bottle, the sound produced has a wavelength of a
few metres, so this approximation is pretty good, but it is worth checking whenever you start to
describe something as a Helmholtz oscillator. The consequence of this approximation is that we
can neglect pressure variations inside the volume of the container: the pressure oscillation will
have the same phase everywhere inside the container.
Let the air in the neck have an effective length L and cross sectional area S. Its mass is then SL
times the density of air . (Some complications about the effective length are discussed at the end
of this page.) If this 'plug' of air descends a small distance x into the bottle, it compresses the air
in the container so that the air that previously occupied volume V now has volume V-Sx.
Consequently, the pressure of that air rises from atmospheric pressure PA to a higher value PA+p.

Now you might think that the pressure increase would just be proportional to the volume
decrease. That would be the case if the compression happened so slowly that the temperature did
not change. In vibrations that give rise to sound, however, the changes are fast and so the
temperature rises on compression, giving a larger change in pressure. Technically they are
adiabatic, meaning that heat has no time to move, and the resulting equation involves a constant
, the ratio of specific heats, which is about 1.4 for air. (This is explained in an appendix.) As a
result, the pressure change p produced by a small volume change V is just
Now the mass m is moved by the difference in pressure between the top and bottom of the neck,

i.e. a nett force pS, so we write Newton's law for the acceleration a:

substituting for F and m gives:

So the restoring force is proportional to the displacement. This is the condition for Simple
Harmonic Motion, and it has a frequency which is 1/2 times the square root of the constant of
proportionality, so

Now the speed c of sound in air is determined by the density, the pressure and ratio of specific
heats, so we can write:
Let's put in some numbers: for a 1 litre bottle, with S = 3 square centimetres and L = 5
centimetres, the frequency is 130 Hz, which is about the C below middle C. (See notes.) So the
wavelength is 2.6 metres, which is much bigger than the bottle. This justifies, post hoc, the
assumption made at the beginning of the derivation.
Complications involving the effective length
The first diagram on this page draws the 'plug' of air as though it were a cylinder that terminates
neatly at either end of the neck of the bottle. This is oversimplified. In practice, an extra volume
both inside and outside moves with the air in the neck as suggested in the animation above. The
extra length that should be added to the geometrical length of the neck is typically (and very
approximately) of 0.6 times the radius at the outside end, and one radius at the inside end).

An example. Ra
Inta made this
example. He
took a spherical
Helmholtz
resonator with a
volume of
0.00292 m3and a
cylindrical neck
with length
0.080 m and
cross-sectional
area
0.00083 m2To
excite it, he
struck it with the
palm of his hand
and then
released it. A
microphone
inside the
resonator
records the
sound, which is
shown in the
oscillogram at
left. You can see Waveform (top) and sound spectrum (the latter on a log-log scale) of the impact response of
that the hand
a Helmholtz resonator.
seals the
resonator for
rather less than
0.1 s, and that
during this time
the oscillations
are weaker and
of relatively
high frequency.
Once the hand is
released, an
oscillation is
established,
which gradually
dies away as it
loses energy
through viscous

and turbulent
drag, and also
by sound
radiation. Close
examination
shows that the
frequency rises
slightly as the
hand moves
away from the
open end,
because this the
hand restricts
the solid angle
available for
radiation and
thus increases
the end effect.
The length of
the neck is
increased by one
baffled and one
unbaffled end
effect, giving it
an effective
length of
0.105 m. With a
speed of sound
of 343 m/s, the
expression
above gives a
resonant
frequency of
90 Hz.

Sound of the
resonator being
slapped.

Helmholtz resonances and guitars

* I said above that the air in the body of a guitar acts almost like a Helmholtz oscillator. This case

is complicated because the body can swell a little when the air pressure rises inside---and also
because the air 'in' the sound hole of the guitar has a geometry that is less easily visualised than
that in the neck of a bottle. Indeed, in the case of the guitar body, the length of the plug of the air
is approximately equal to the two 'end effects' at the end of a 'pipe' which is only a couple of mm
thick. The end effects, however, are related to and of similar size to the radius of the hole, so the
mass of air is substantial. The length of the end effect of a cylindrical pipe that opens onto an
infinite, plane baffle is 0.85 times the radius of the pipe. Although the soundboard of a guitar is
not infinite, one would expect a similar end effect, and so the effective length of the 'plug' of air
would be about 1.7 times the radius of the hole. (Some makers increase this by fixing a short
tube below the soundhole, with equal radius.)
A couple of people have written asking how big the sound hole should be for a given instrument.
Well, we can use the equation above to start to answer that question. However, the swelling of
the body is important. This makes the 'spring' of the air rather softer, and so lowers the frequency.
The purely Helmholtz resonance can be investigated by keeping the body volume constant.
When measuring this, a common practice is to bury the guitar in sand, to impede the swelling or
'breathing' of the body. However, guitars are not usually played in this situation. So the
Helmholtz calculation will give an overestimate of the frequency of resonance for a real, flexible
body.
Let's assume a circular sound hole with radius r, so S = r2, and L = 1.7r as explained above.
When we substitute into the equation for the Helmholtz frequency, using c = 340 m/s, we get:

Notice that we are using standard SI units: we have used the speed of sound in metres and
seconds, so the volume must be in cubic metres and the frequency in Hertz, to give an answer in
metres.
It is more complicated when the tone holes are not circular, because the end effect is not equal to
that of a circle with the same area. PhD student and luthier John McLennan is writing up a report
of some measurements about this, which we'll post here soon.
Is the 0.85r effect reasonable? Ra Inta, who is doing a PhD on guitar acoustics in our lab,
suggests an interesting demonstration:
Damp the strings on your guitar so they don't vibrate (e.g. a handkerchief between strings and
fingerboard). Hold the palm of one hand above the soundhole, and close to it. With a finger of
your other hand, strike the soundboard a sharp blow near the soundhole and close to the 1st
string. You will feel a pulse of air on the palm of your hand. The blow of your finger pushes the
soundboard in and squeezes some air out of the body. Now move your hand gradually further
away from the hole, and continue tapping with the finger. When do you cease to feel the
movement of the air? This will give you a rough estimate of the length of the 'end effect' in the
case of the sound hole.

Helmholtz Resonance
Introduction
This activity was developed to introduce students to Helmholtz
resonance, and to give
students practice making
measurements and calculations.
Material
Empty glass coke bottles
Metric Ruler
Graduated cylinder
Calculator
Water
To Do and Notice
Have each student blow across the top of an empty coke bottle to
produce a sound.
The sound created when you blow across the top of an empty bottle is
due to
Helmholtz resonance.
Have the students add varying amounts of water to the coke bottle to
see how the
tone changes. What happens when you add water? What happens
when you remove
water?
The frequency of the tone produced in each bottle can described by
the following
equation:

f
vA
Vl H

2
where fH is the Helmholtz frequency, is the speed of sound in air (343
meters/s), A is
the cross sectional area of the opening, V is the volume of air in the
resonator cavity,
and l is the length of the opening.
Use this equation to determine the volume of water needed produce a
certain
frequency. Remember to use consistent units while making the
calculation.
The volume of water needed will be the total volume of the bottle
cavity minus the

volume of air needed to produce a certain tone, or frequency.

V V V water bottle air

where Vair is calculated by rearranging the frequency equation as

shown below:

V
A
l
v
f air
H

2
2

Whats going on?

Air blown across the opening of the coke bottle acts as a spring
compressing the air in
the bottle beneath the neck. When air is forced into a cavity, the
pressure inside
increases. This high pressure surge of air flowing out of the bottle will
then
overcompensate, and the pressure inside the bottle will decrease
creating a low
pressure cavity. This then causes air to flow back in, increasing the
pressure inside.
This process repeats until equilibrium or atmospheric pressure is
reached. By
changing the volume of air in the cavity, we change the frequency with
which the
pressure wave resonates.
Going Further

Challenge the students to produce a C major scale with the coke

bottles by first
calculating the amount of water to add to each bottle, and then testing
the accuracy
of their calculations by adding the water and blowing. The frequencies
of the C major
scale that can be produced in a typical coke bottle are in the table
below:
Note Frequency (Hz)
C4 261.63
D4 293.66
E4 329.63
F4 349.23
G4 392
A4 440
B4 493.88
C5 523.25