In this paper, the effects of silicone surfactant on the mechanical, thermal, and acoustical properties of flexible polyurethane foams are studied. At first, by introducing the reactions of the foam production and expressing the stoichiometric relationships, a method is provided to select the amounts of the basic compounds for getting the desirable properties. By knowing the OH number of polyol and the NCO content of isocyanate after selecting an amount of a blowing agent for the reaction, the quantity of each compound to produce the desirable foam can be found. Then different foams with various amounts of surfactant are produced. By preparing proper samples, the mechanical, thermal, nonacoustical, and acoustical properties of the foams are measured or calculated by using different instruments. The nonacoustical properties are obtained based on two distinct methods, i.e., a semiphenomenological method and an indirect method. The obtained properties are validated by comparing the calculated theoretical sound absorption coefficients with the measured ones. The results show that with a small increase of surfactant, the acoustical properties of foam samples improve by about 50% without any significant changes in other mechanical and thermal properties of the foams. This improvement results from the variations of reticulation rate and cell size. In addition, the initial desirable porosity and density considered in the stoichiometric relations are fairly achieved in produced samples. These results validate the accuracy of the stoichiometric relations.

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In this paper, the natural and resonant frequencies of porous media are studied based on Biot's equations. The governing equations of porous media are analytically solved by using the recent developed potential function method. Based on the obtained results, the natural and resonant frequencies of the porous medium can be investigated. In this research, several foams with different acoustical and non-acoustical properties are considered and the natural and resonant frequencies are studied. In addition, for a better understanding of the natural and variation of resonant frequencies of the considered foams, various damping gains are defined and by changing them gradually, the variations of absorption coefficient and field variables are studied. The results show that the trends of absorption coefficient versus frequency for porous media can be predicted by considering the arrangement of structural and fluid natural frequencies. Also, around the structural natural frequencies two types of variations in absorption coefficient occur (i.e., maximum-minimum or maximum variations). Additionally, after computing the corresponding results of rigid frame and Biot's models it can be seen that the rigid frame theory cannot correctly predict the sound absorption coefficient in the vicinity of structural natural frequencies.

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