The continual increase in aircraft travel, coupled with the increasing drive to reduce the impact of noise on the environment (and on passengers and crew!), has significantly raised the profile of aircraft noise reduction. The ISVR has, for many years, been at the forefront of the analysis and control of sound radiation from vibrating panels, such as in aircraft structures.
The continual increase in aircraft travel, coupled with the increasing drive to reduce the impact of noise on the environment (and on passengers and crew!), has significantly raised the profile of aircraft noise reduction. The ISVR has, for many years, been at the forefront of the analysis and control of sound radiation from vibrating panels, such as in aircraft structures.
Current research in the group, in collaboration with our Dynamics group, is directed at co-locating novel sensors and actuators into flexible panels and in distributing such pairs strategically around the panel to act as local controllers of vibration within their own local regions of interest. This promises to produce improved control of vibration and sound radiation and to overcome the dependency on a centralised controller. With the current thrust to develop micro-fabricated sensor-actuators such technology could then be integrated into panels such as used in an aircraft fuselage and could offer the possibility of further reductions in radiated noise.