Technology
This innovative sound barrier technology has been pioneered through acoustic metamaterials, a new area of physics. These are artificially fabricated materials designed to control, direct, and manipulate sound in the form of sonic, infrasonic, or ultrasonic waves. The technology features a particular type of metamaterial known as a sonic crystal – a periodic array of wave scatterers in a medium which demonstrates severe and possibly total reduction of sound waves in specific frequency ranges.
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| Atomic structure | Sculpture by Eusbio Sempere, Madrid, Spain |
The technology, Broad Band Sound Attenuating Device (BBSAD), is an acoustic barrier consisting of novel scatterers arranged in a sonic crystal pattern, where each scatterer is an acoustic resonator that is excited over a range of frequencies, corresponding to the resonances of the scatterers.
The barrier can block sound in a very broad frequency range and the extent of this range depends on the class of BBSAD resonator used. Unlike conventional sonic crystals, the new barrier system only uses limited number of scatterers while in all types of sonic crystals a very large (ideally infinite) number of scatterers are needed to block sound.
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The technology builds on work carried out by Loughborough University Physicists Dr Daniel Elford, Dr Luke Chalmers, Professor Feo Kusmartev and Dr Gerry Swallowe. It is currently supported by an EPSRC award and was previously supported by an Innovation Fellowship funded by the East Midlands Development Agency and the European Regional Development Fund.