ACOUSTICS AND NOISE CONTROL

THERMAL ENGINEERING

Noise is one of the most common hazards we face today. It is all around us: in our homes, in our workplaces, in our cars. All too often, its negative effects are ignored. Overexposure to noise can cause immediate symptoms like irritability, stress, and inefficiency in the workplace. The long term effects of noise exposure however, are more daunting. Permanent hearing loss can occur as a result of continued exposure. Once the damage occurs, it is irreversible, but hearing loss is preventable (NIOSH 2005). In this work we focus the boundary element method to analyze eight factors that affect enclosure design. The objective will be to understand how each factor affects the performance of partial enclosures like opening size, opening location, absorption coverage, absorption location etc. in this dissertation work we concentrate on the behavior of free-standing, partial enclosures at low frequencies (0 to 1000Hz). Structure-borne noises will not be considered. Although structure-borne noise is important, it is difficult to model and is usually case-dependent. Because of this assumption, the cases studied will not accurately reflect real conditions, but they will better demonstrate the effect of the eight factors under consideration.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.