A compact active structural acoustic control method for minimizing radiated sound power

Active structural acoustic control is an active control method that controls a vibrating structure in a manner that reduces the sound power radiated from the structure. Such methods focus on attenuating some metric that results in attenuated sound power, while not necessarily minimizing the structural vibration. The work reported here outlines the weighted sum of spatial gradients (WSSG) control metric as a method to attenuate structural radiation. The WSSG method utilizes a compact error sensor that is able to measure the acceleration and the acceleration gradients at the sensor location. These vibration signals are combined into the WSSG metric in a manner that is closely related to the radiated sound power, such that minimizing the WSSG also results in a minimization of the sound power. The connection between WSSG and acoustic radiation modes will be highlighted. Computational and experimental results for both flat plates and cylindrical shells will be presented, indicating that the WSSG method can achieve near optimal attenuation of the radiated sound power with a minimum number of sensors.

Shaping acoustic radiation induced by vibrotactile rendering on a touch surface

Many electronic devices with touch-sensitive surfaces aim to provide vibrotactile feedback, along with visual or auditory feedback, to facilitate the interaction between the user and the interface. In parallel to these efforts, recent studies developed various vibration rendering techniques, enabling more complex vibration patterns to be generated on the touch surface. However, few have addressed sound radiation induced by vibrotactile rendering on a touch surface, which could significantly impact the haptic interaction's overall perception. This study presents a method to shape the acoustic radiation due to rendering high-fidelity vibrotactile feedback on a touch surface. The proposed method utilizes measured frequency response functions and a vibroacoustic representation of the touch surface to define the relationship between actuator driving signals, vibration responses on the touch surface, and radiated sound power. Proper actuator driving signals are derived from the optimization problem formulated using the relationship. The proposed method was demonstrated through vibration rendering experiments on a touch surface comprising an acrylic plate and voice coil actuators. The results showed that the proposed method could shape the acoustic radiation while rendering target vibration patterns at desired positions on the touch surface. This study's proposed method could allow haptic engineers to design vibrotactile feedback and sound radiation simultaneously for a more compelling haptic experience.

Radiated Sound Power from Near-Surface Acoustic Sources

This article investigates the radiated sound power from idealized propeller noise sources, characterized by elemental monopole and dipole acoustic sources near the sea surface. The free surface of the sea is modeled as a pressure-release surface. The ratio of sound power of the near surface sources to the sound power from the same sources in an unbounded fluid is presented as a function of source immersion relative to sound wavelength. We herein show that the sound power radiated by submerged monopole and horizontal dipole sources is greatly reduced by the effect of the free surface at typical blade passing frequencies. By contrast, the sound power from a submerged vertical dipole is doubled. A transition frequency for the submerged monopole and horizontal dipole is identified. Above this transition frequency, the radiated power is not significantly influenced by the sea surface. Directivity patterns for the acoustic sources are also presented. Introduction The principal sources contributing to underwater radiated noise (URN) over a wide frequency range are propellers and onboard machinery (Urick 1983; Ross 1987; Collier 1997; Carlton 2007). Propeller sources are highly complex, but simplification is possible at low frequencies where the wavelength of underwater sound is much larger than propeller dimensions. The propeller may then be regarded as a set of fluctuating forces at the propeller hub and a stationary monopole source that represents the growth and collapse of a cavitation region as each blade passes through the region of wake deficit. This type of model was used by Kinns and Bloor (2004) to examine the net fluctuating forces on a cruise ship hull due to defined propeller sources. The nature of the monopole source was considered by Gray and Greeley (1980), who focused on singlescrew merchant ships where cavitation is dominant at operational speeds. Nonuniformity in the wake, as well as static pressure that falls toward the sea surface, causes this monopole source to be located near top dead center, closer to the surface than the propeller hub. It introduces cyclic components at multiples of propeller blade passing frequency (bpf) as well as broadband noise over a wide frequency range. These components create a pressure field that acts on nearby hull surfaces, but the URN is controlled by the presence of the pressure release surface that corresponds to the free surface of the sea. The aim of this article was to investigate how idealized propeller noise sources are influenced by the surface of the sea.

Optimized Perforation Schemes in Railway Wheels Toward Acoustic Radiation Mitigation

Rolling noise emitted by railway wheels is a problem that affects human health and limits the expansion of the railway network. It is caused by the wheel vibration due to the wheel-rail contact force, and it is important in almost all the vehicle velocity range. The minimization of noise radiation associated with changes on the wheel web is discussed in this work, focusing on potential shape modifications in existing wheels in the form of a perforation distribution over the web. Such a post-manufacturing technique is a cost-effective solution that can be performed in a relatively short term. The implemented objective function is directly related to the overall radiated sound power, which is minimized using a genetic algorithm-based optimizer. In the acoustic model, radiation efficiencies are approximated to unity, the accuracy of this assumption being also studied in the work. The results reflect that an optimized distribution of perforations on the web of a railway wheel can reduce the total sound power level, by about 5 dB(A) and 2 dB(A) for curved and straight web, respectively. The mitigation of the radiated sound power is due to the fact that certain wheel vibration modes are modified and shifted to other frequencies where they are less excited. Finally, the relevance of the cross-sectional curvature of the web is explored by studying two different web geometries, suggesting that it can strongly influence the noise mitigation effects of the perforation pattern.

Faster Calculation of the Low-Frequency Radiated Sound Power of Underwater Slender Cylindrical Shells

Based on the fact that beam-type modes play the main role in determining the sound radiation from an underwater thin slender (length-to-radius ratio L/a>20) elastic cylindrical shell, an equivalent-beam method is proposed for calculating the low-frequency radiated sound power of underwater thin slender unstiffened and stiffened cylindrical shells. The natural bending frequencies of the cylindrical shell are calculated by analytical and numerical methods and used to solve equivalent Young’s modulus of the equivalent beam. This approach simplifies the vibration problem of the three-dimensional cylindrical shell into that of a two-dimensional beam, which can be used to simplify the calculation process of radiated sound power. Added mass is used to approximate the fluid-structure coupling, further simplifying the calculation process. Calculation examples of underwater simply supported unstiffened and stiffened cylindrical shells verify the proposed method by comparison with analytical and numerical results. Finally, the effects of the size and spacing of the stiffeners on the sound radiation characteristics of underwater free-free stiffened cylindrical shells are discussed. The proposed method can be extended to the rapid calculation of the sound radiation characteristics of underwater slender complex cylindrical shells in the low-frequency range.

Optimal passive shunted damping configurations for noise reduction in sandwich panels

This article addresses the issue of vibration and noise reduction in laminated sandwich plates using piezoelectric patches with passive shunted damping. A finite element implementation of a laminated sandwich plate with viscoelastic core and surface bonded piezoelectric patches is used to obtain the frequency response of the panels. The sound transmission characteristics of the panels are evaluated by computing their radiated sound power using the Rayleigh integral method. Resistor and inductor shunt damping circuits are used to add damping to the sandwich panels. The optimal location of the surface-bonded piezoelectric patches is then obtained, along with the resistor and inductor circuits resistance and inductance, using direct multisearch optimization to minimize added weight, number of patches, and noise radiation. Trade-off Pareto optimal fronts and the respective optimal patch configurations are obtained.