Abstract:

Presented here are the first absolute measurements of the total acoustic energy scattered and absorbed by humans. The total scattering and absorption cross-sections were obtained from long-duration acoustic reverberation, for individual humans walking randomly in a room. An extension of the technique is proposed to estimate the absorption cross-section for the human body. Within the audible range, the sound scattering spectra of the human body is similar to that of a hard ellipsoid with the same volume (dimensions proportional to the weight to the one-third power). Moreover, we show that increasing amounts of clothing have little effect on scattering while absorption is greatly increased.