Soundboard Vibration

[Richard Brekne]

Been doing some more reading on this and have the following offering to submit. Goes to the question of transverse / longitudinal string vibrational input to the soundboard / bridge assembly. 

>From a 20 page article... "Sound Production by a Vibrating Piano Soundboard"  (N. Giordano)

Giordano is  the professor of physics and assistant dean of science at Purdue.


"IV. SOUND PRODUCTION BY AN IN-PLANE FORCE ON THE BRIDGE 
It is well known that the blow of a piano hammer excites both transverse and longitudinal 
vibrations of the string [2,7]. The transverse vibration leads to a force on the bridge which 
is directed perpendicular to the soundboard, and thus to sound, and this sound generation 
has been the main subject of the present work. Longitudinal string vibrations will yield 
a force on the bridge which is along the string direction, i.e., parallel to the plane of the 
soundboard. This force will also drive soundboard vibrations which can produce sound, 
although one might expect that the amount of sound generated by this mechanism will 
be small. To the best of our knowledge, generation of sound via this mechanism has not previously been studied." 


The whole article (in GS format) may be found at

http://www.auditory.org/asamtgs/asa97snd/2pMUa/2pMUa4.html

and takes the track that non transverse vibratory movement in sound production from piano soundboards  is more significant then previously thought. He also stresses that the subject matter has been subjected to such study in the past only by Susiki and Wogram in rather limited projects.

Happy reading.

RicB