Noise Abatement From Large Size Electric Generators

Author(s):  
Wei Tong

Growing environmental sound concerns and recognition that lengthy unprotected exposure to high industrial noise levels can be detrimental to man have resulted in increased attention to reducing industrial noise. In the United States, it is required by law that all turbomachinery manufacturers must provide acoustic guarantees to their customers. For instance, for majority of generators, the near field sound pressure level is usually guaranteed not to exceed 85 dBA. To accomplish this goal, a number of methods of noise reduction have been developed in power industry. As one of the most practical and cost-effective solutions, acoustic blankets have been designed and tested for using on large size electric generators to efficiently reduce their sound pressure levels. This work has successfully demonstrated the potential of acoustic blankets for improve the passive acoustic transmission characteristics from generators. The acoustic data obtained from a field test have shown that the blankets can reduce the overall sound pressure level from large size generators about 4 to 6 dBA.

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-120
Author(s):  
AM Shehap ◽  
Abd Elfattah A Mahmoud ◽  
Hatem Kh Mohamed

Nowadays, lightweight building structures are widely used by the construction industry as a more natural and cost-effective method. The purpose of this study is to compare between sound pressure level and vibration velocity method for sound reduction index determination for single- and double-leaf gypsum board partitions. The sound pressure level method was carried out according to the requirements of ISO 140-3:1997, and the vibration velocity method (V) was carried out according to some criteria of ISO 10848-1:2006. Regarding double-leaf partitions, measurements were carried out with the leaves separated by 5- and 10-cm air gaps. The effect of cavity filling with absorbing materials was studied experimentally. The space between the leaves was filled with Rockwool and polyurethane to illustrate the effect of cavity absorption on the sound reduction index behavior. It was found that there is good agreement between the two methods. Also, cavity filling with a 10-cm absorbing material such as Rockwool increases the sound reduction index at the critical frequency by 7 dB using sound pressure method and 4 dB using vibration velocity method.


Author(s):  
Ang Li ◽  
Jun Chen ◽  
Yangfan Liu ◽  
J. Stuart Bolton ◽  
Patricia Davies

Abstract The bladeless fan is a new concept of fan that does not have visible impellers. It features low noise level, uniform airflow, and improved safety. It has been widely applied in household appliances. Since the customers are particularly sensitive to the noise generated by the fan, the aeroacoustics performance of the fan needs to be accurately characterized in the design stage. In this study, computational fluid dynamic (CFD) and computational aeroacoustics (CAA) are applied to investigate the aeroacoustics performance and identify the major noise source of the bladeless fan. A prototype of the bladeless fan, including a wind channel, a base cavity, a rotor and a stator inside the base, is set in a computational domain of 4m × 2m × 2m and the airflow through the fan is simulated. The hybrid mesh is generated, the unstructured mesh in the near field, and the structured at the far field. To compute the flow field, steady RANS simulation (standard k–ε turbulence model) and Large Eddy simulation (Smagorinsky-Lilly model) are carried out. Ffowcs Williams and Hawkings (FW-H) analogy is used to predict the acoustic field. Experiments, including air velocity measurement and sound pressure measurement, are conducted to validate simulation results. Sound pressure level results at the near-field receiver illustrate that the blade passage frequency can be captured by combined CFD and CAA method. Noise source analysis shows that the combination of the rotor and stator contributes most to the noise produced by the bladeless fan. The wind channel is the secondary source. Sound pressure level contours at different distances and different heights are generated to investigate the directivity pattern of the noise generated by the bladeless fan. At the near field, the produced noise at the front and the back of the bladeless fan are louder than those at left and right; at the far field, the noise at the front is much larger than the other three sides. In addition, at the near field, with the increase of the height, two separated hotspots appear over 2,500Hz and the sound pressure level at these two hotspots increases; at the far field, the noise distribution at different heights is similar and the peak near 3,000Hz can be estimated. A possible reason to cause this peak is vortex shedding at the trailing edge of the rotor’s blades. The aeroacoustics analysis is helpful to develop strategies to reduce noise and guide the improved design of the bladeless fan.


2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-171
Author(s):  
Sajad Zare ◽  
Rasoul Hemmatjo ◽  
Hossein ElahiShirvan ◽  
Ashkan Jafari Malekabad ◽  
Mansour Ziaei ◽  
...  

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 590-610 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wen-Qiang Dai ◽  
Xu Zheng ◽  
Zhi-Yong Hao ◽  
Yi Qiu ◽  
Heng Li ◽  
...  

The aerodynamic noise has been the dominant factor of noise issues in high-speed train as the traveling speed increases. The inter-coach windshield region is considered as one of the main aerodynamic noise sources; however, the corresponding characteristics have not been well investigated. In this paper, a hybrid method is adopted to study the aerodynamic noise around the windshield region. The effectiveness of simulation methods is validated by a simple case of cavity noise. After that, the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes simulation is used to obtain the characteristics of flow field around the windshield region, which determine the aerodynamic noise. Then the nonlinear acoustic solver approach is employed to acquire the near-field noise, while the Ffowcs-Williams/Hawking equation is solved for far-field acoustic propagation. The results indicate that the windshield region is approximately an open cavity filled with severe disturbance flow. According to the analysis of sound pressure distribution in the near-acoustic field, both sides of the windshield region appear symmetrical two-lobe shape with different directivities. The results of frequency spectrum analysis indicate that the aerodynamic noise inside inter-coach space is a typical broadband one from 100 Hz to 5k Hz, and most acoustic power is restricted in the low-medium frequency range (below 500 Hz). In addition, the acoustic power in the low frequency range (below 100 Hz) is closely related to the cavity resonance with the resonance peak frequency of 42 Hz. The overall sound pressure level at different speeds shows that the acoustic power grows approximately 5th power of the train speed. Two forms of outside-windshields are designed to reduce the noise around the windshield region, and the results show the full-windshield form is better in noise reduction, which apparently eliminates interior cavity noise of inter-coach space and lessens the overall sound pressure level on the sides of near-field by about 13 dB.


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 931-947
Author(s):  
Teresa L. D. Hardy ◽  
Carol A. Boliek ◽  
Daniel Aalto ◽  
Justin Lewicke ◽  
Kristopher Wells ◽  
...  

Purpose The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to identify a set of communication-based predictors (including both acoustic and gestural variables) of masculinity–femininity ratings and (b) to explore differences in ratings between audio and audiovisual presentation modes for transgender and cisgender communicators. Method The voices and gestures of a group of cisgender men and women ( n = 10 of each) and transgender women ( n = 20) communicators were recorded while they recounted the story of a cartoon using acoustic and motion capture recording systems. A total of 17 acoustic and gestural variables were measured from these recordings. A group of observers ( n = 20) rated each communicator's masculinity–femininity based on 30- to 45-s samples of the cartoon description presented in three modes: audio, visual, and audio visual. Visual and audiovisual stimuli contained point light displays standardized for size. Ratings were made using a direct magnitude estimation scale without modulus. Communication-based predictors of masculinity–femininity ratings were identified using multiple regression, and analysis of variance was used to determine the effect of presentation mode on perceptual ratings. Results Fundamental frequency, average vowel formant, and sound pressure level were identified as significant predictors of masculinity–femininity ratings for these communicators. Communicators were rated significantly more feminine in the audio than the audiovisual mode and unreliably in the visual-only mode. Conclusions Both study purposes were met. Results support continued emphasis on fundamental frequency and vocal tract resonance in voice and communication modification training with transgender individuals and provide evidence for the potential benefit of modifying sound pressure level, especially when a masculine presentation is desired.


2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-145
Author(s):  
Yang Zhouo ◽  
Ming Gao ◽  
Suoying He ◽  
Yuetao Shi ◽  
Fengzhong Sun

Based on the basic theory of water droplets impact noise, the generation mechanism and calculation model of the water-splashing noise for natural draft wet cooling towers were established in this study, and then by means of the custom software, the water-splashing noise was studied under different water droplet diameters and water-spraying densities as well as partition water distribution patterns conditions. Comparedwith the water-splashing noise of the field test, the average difference of the theoretical and the measured value is 0.82 dB, which validates the accuracy of the established theoretical model. The results based on theoretical model showed that, when the water droplet diameters are smaller in cooling tower, the attenuation of total sound pressure level of the water-splashing noise is greater. From 0 m to 8 m away from the cooling tower, the sound pressure level of the watersplashing noise of 3 mm and 6 mm water droplets decreases by 8.20 dB and 4.36 dB, respectively. Additionally, when the water-spraying density becomes twice of the designed value, the sound pressure level of water-splashing noise all increases by 3.01 dB for the cooling towers of 300 MW, 600 MW and 1000 MW units. Finally, under the partition water distribution patterns, the change of the sound pressure level is small. For the R s/2 and Rs/3 partition radius (Rs is the radius of water-spraying area), when the water-spraying density ratio between the outer and inner zone increases from 1 to 3, the sound pressure level of water-splashing noise increases by 0.7 dB and 0.3 dB, respectively.


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