Acoustic radiation torque on an irregularly shaped scatterer in an arbitrary sound field.

To eliminate the limitation of the conventional acoustic radiation torque theory, which is only applicable to a disklike scatterer in a plane sound field, a new theory is established to calculate the radiation torque on any irregularly shaped scatterer in any arbitrary sound field. First, with the aid of the conservation law of angular momentum, the acoustic radiation torque is expressed as the angular momentum flux through a spherical surface with the center at the scatterer's centroid. Second, the velocity potential of the scattered field is derived, taking into account the influences of the translational and rotational movements of the scatterer induced by the first order stress of the incident sound field. Finally, a general calculating formula of the acoustic radiation torque is achieved. For a disklike scatterer in a plane sound filed, results from the above formula are well identical with those conventional formulas. By studying the case of a semicircular cylinder scatterer in a standing-wave sound field, it is found that for an irregularly shaped scatterer its rotation velocity is normally nonzero and the radiation torque changes with the spatial attitude.