Accoustic Ideas

[UWOKev]

Hello,
I am enetering my 4th year of electrical engineering this coming sept. At my university we must do a 4th year project that has some worth to it. I am extremely interested in accoustics and the associated electronics and would like to do a project in that area. My problem is I don't know too much about the scene right now. So I'm looking for ideas for a project, maybe something that is a hassle in the field that is too tedious for a working professional to tackle?? I'm open to ANY suggestions so please write any ideas you may have.

 

[tomirvine]

There are a vast number of potential acoustic projects. Here are two ideas:

1. Take a long tube, which could represent an automotive exhaust pipe for example. Apply a sinusoidal acoustic signal via a speaker at one end of the pipe. Mount a microphone somewhere along the pipe. Use the signal from the microphone to drive a speaker at the opposite end of the pipe. Thus a feedback loop is formed. The idea is to achieve "active noise cancellation." The control speaker should produce a signal which is 180 degrees out-of-phase with the source signal. This project has been done before, but it would be a good student project.

2. Here is a project that is less exotic, but which is needed by the aerospace industry. Obtain panels out of composite materials. Expose the panels to a broadband random acoustic pressure field. Measure the vibration response of the panels. Develop a transfer function of the vibration response to the the acoustic pressure. This has been done for aluminum panels, but the same research needs to be done for composite panels. Seen me an Email. I will send you a paper on this subject in reply.

A good, practical reference is:

Alton Everest, The Master Handbook of Acoustics

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0071360972/vibrationdata-20/102-5831144-4950553

Sincerely, Tom Irvine
Email: tomirvine@aol.com