In this communication, the sound absorption characteristics of rectangular-shaped plane space sound absorbers without any backing structure using permeable membranes (PMs) are measured by reverberation room method. First, three types of PMs, in this study woven fabrics, are selected with different flow resistances and surface densities. They are prepared in the plane rectangular-shaped space absorbers of two different sizes. The measured results are discussed through comparison with the

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... theoretical and measured results for absorbers of the other shapes or configurations. The present results and discussion demonstrate that the reverberation absorption coefficients of the proposed absorbers are low at low frequencies and converge to a moderately high value at high frequencies. Especially, ones with higher flow resistance than the air impedance converge to a value greater than 0.5, which is a theoretically estimated maximum absorption coefficient of infinite single-leaf PM. This is inferred to be attributed mainly to area effect. From these results the proposed absorbers can be used effectively despite of their very simple structure. Also it is found that the proposed absorber can offer higher sound absorption than permeable membrane absorbers of other shapes or configuration. Regarding the effect of the size, the absorbers of smaller size offer higher absorption coefficients regardless of material properties of the PMs used in the experiments.