Noise Canceling Technology For Windows

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Noise Canceling Windows (Images courtesy Discovery Channel :: News)
By Andrew Liszewski

Engineers working under Thilo Bein at the Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability have come up with a way to bring the noise canceling technology usually seen in headphones to windows. Anyone living or working in a busy urban area can appreciate the idea of their office or apartment windows being able to cancel out the constant noise from the outside. Since windows tend to work just like the vibrating cone in a speaker the engineers figured if they could control this vibration they could then reduce its ability to transmit sound.

Bein and his team developed a method to do just that. They used postage stamp-sized patches made of a ceramic called piezoelectric material, which behaves both like a sensor and vibration generator when shot with an electric charge. (The material can be made transparent and embedded in the glass, too, although the team has not yet accomplished this step with the window.)

Wires running through the window link the stamp-sized patches to a computer controller and an amplifier. When a sound-generated vibration rattles the window, the piezoelectric patch senses it.

That data goes to the controller, which in turn delivers a specific electric charge back up to the patch, causing it to vibrate at a phase that ideally cancels out the sound vibrations.

Apparently in lab experiments they were able to reduce sounds at 90-100 decibels by about 50% percent but their results vary depending on how erratic or steady the sounds actually are. Over the next few years Bein and his team hope to make the system more efficient and expect it to hit the market in about 5 years.

[ Vibrating Window Negates Noise @ Discovery Channel :: News ] VIA [ Newlaunches ]

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