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An acoustically rigid boundary has zero perturbation normal velocity. For a reflected acoustic plane wave, pressure amplitudes add in phase and the reflection coefficient is $+1$. It is the infinite-surface acoustic impedance limit. A pressure-release boundary instead fixes the pressure perturbation to zero and reflects with coefficient $-1$.

The Lighthill acoustic analogy for a moving body has a volume acoustic quadrupole, a surface acoustic monopole from acoustic thickness noise, and a surface acoustic dipole from acoustic loading noise. For an impermeable moving surface, with outward normal $n$, normal surface speed $v_n$, and fluid and body normal velocities equal, the surface mass coefficient is ${\rho }_0{v}_n$ and the surface loading is the force exerted on the fluid. Schematically, the density-source equation isThe density perturbation is understood with the chosen interior extension. Permeable-surface versions have additional mass and momentum flux terms. Source approximations must distinguish local thickness radiation from cancellation of its compact net-volume contribution.

The normal velocity is the scalar component of a velocity in a specified unit-normal direction. Its sign depends on the orientation of the normal. At a material interface, no penetration equates the fluid and interface normal velocities; it does not require their tangential components to agree. Surface acoustic impedance uses a fixed inward normal-velocity convention to determine the sign of energy absorbed by a boundary.

In the Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings equation, the other source types are a surface acoustic monopole associated with acoustic thickness noise, and a volume acoustic quadrupole involving the Lighthill stress tensor. On an impermeable material surface, fluid and surface normal velocities agree. There is no through-surface mass-flux source; the remaining thickness source is $Q={\rho }_0{v}_n$. For a rigid body, the leading acoustic compact-source approximation to that source hasThus there is no leading net-volume acoustic monopole. To neglect thickness radiation beyond that leading cancellation, assume negligible volume displacement, as for ideal thin blades, or that its higher multipoles are small compared with the retained acoustic loading noise. Rigidity alone does not make a moving finite-volume body's local thickness source identically zero.

The volume acoustic quadrupole may be neglected for low Mach number motion when exterior turbulent or nonlinear stresses do not provide a competing strong source. We also assume small linear acoustics perturbations, a uniform reference sound speed, and negligible relevant viscous and entropy sources. These are source-strength approximations, particularly important if a loading contribution itself cancels by symmetry. Under them, the retained acoustic dipole is the force exerted by the object on the fluid, with the sign used in the previous solution.

Let $R=|x|$, $n=x/R$, and ${\tau }_0=t-R/c_0$. In the acoustic far field, $R$ is large compared with the object and $\omega R/c_0\gg 1$. For a source of size $\ell$ with $\omega \ell /c_0\ll 1$ and small surface Mach number, source-dependent delays and the Doppler factor can be neglected to leading order. The surface integral then contains just the total force $\mathcal{F}(\tau )={\int }_{S}FdS$. Differentiating its retarded time, rather than its $R^{-1}$ spreading factor, gives the radiating termThe sign follows from ${\partial }_{x_i}{\tau }_0=-n_i/c_0$. Differentiating $R^{-1}$ or the direction $n$ instead produces the lower-order near field. A constant total force does not radiate at this leading compact order.

Use the prescribed harmonic convention $e^{i\omega t}$. For a propagating acoustic plane wave, let $k=(\omega /c_0)\cos \theta$ and $\ell =(\omega /c_0)\sin \theta >0$. The incident and reflected pressure amplitudes in the upper half-space have vertical factors $e^{i\ell y}$ and $e^{-i\ell y}$ respectively:The linear homentropic acoustic equations imply $i\omega {\rho }_0{v}_y=-{\partial }_y{p}^{\prime }$. At the surface, the normal velocity is therefore $\ell (R-A)/({\rho }_0\omega )=-V$, while the pressure amplitude is $P=A+R$. The surface acoustic impedance condition $P=ZV$ givesHere $Z_f$ is the normal acoustic impedance; the angle in this question is measured from the horizontal, not the normal. For a passive acoustic impedance, the mean power absorbed per unit area is $\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{Re}(P{V}^{\ast })=\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{Re}Z|V{|}^2\ge 0$. The four limiting cases have distinct meanings:

Define $k_0=\omega /c_0$ and use the outgoing acoustic square-root branchFor positive real frequency reached from below, $\gamma =i\sqrt{k_0^2-k^2}$ on the propagating interval and is positive real for $|k|>k_0$. The outgoing field in the lower fluid has pressure amplitude $B{e}^{\gamma y}$, since $y<0$. If $\eta =\hat{\eta }{e}^{i\omega t-ikx}$, the shared normal velocity is $i\omega \hat{\eta }$. The linear homentropic acoustic equations therefore giveThis lower-fluid wave is outgoing; no additional incoming sound is included in defining the impedance seen by the upper fluid.

Put $K_s=T{k}^2-m{\omega }^2$. The sheet's force balance gives $K_s\hat{\eta }=-P+B$, hence $P=({\rho }_0{\omega }^2/\gamma -K_s)\hat{\eta }$. Its prescribed downward velocity amplitude is $V=-i\omega \hat{\eta }$. Thus the tensioned-sheet acoustic impedance isThe first term is the lower fluid's normal acoustic impedance, and the second is the sheet's inertial and elastic-sheet tension response. For a real propagating angle, $Z_f={\rho }_0{c}_0/\sin \theta$.

At fixed nonzero frequency and fixed wavenumber, $m\to \infty$ gives $|Z|\to \infty$, a zero-velocity, in-phase reflecting boundary. At fixed $k\ne 0$, $T\to \infty$ gives the same reflection limit, but there is an important exception: elastic-sheet tension does not resist the spatially uniform mode $k=0$. At normal incidence, the impedance remains ${\rho }_0{c}_0+im\omega$ however large the elastic-sheet tension is. With $m=0$ this mode is transparent. By contrast, arbitrarily large mass resists even a spatially uniform oscillation. These fixed-frequency limits exclude a simultaneously tuned structural resonance.

If $m=T=0$, $Z=Z_f$ and $R=0$. The identical fluids are effectively joined across a massless, untensioned interface: pressure and normal velocity continue without reflection. This is the matched case, rather than the pressure-release case.