A virtual sound barrier is an active noise control system that uses arrays of loudspeakers and microphones to create a useful size of quiet zone and can be used to reduce sound propagation, radiation, or transmission from noise sources or to reduce noise level around people in a noisy environment. This book introduces the history, principle, and design methods of virtual sound barriers first, and then describes recent progress in research on the systems. Two virtual sound barrier systems, i.e., planar virtual sound barrier system and three-dimensional virtual sound barrier system, are discussed including applications, limitations and future direction discussions.

This volume presents the proceedings of the Asia-Pacific Vibration Conference (APVC) 2019, emphasizing work devoted to Vibration Engineering for a Sustainable Future. The APVC is one of the larger conferences held biannually with the intention to foster scientific and technical research collaboration among Asia-Pacific countries. The APVC provides a forum for researchers, practitioners, and students from, but not limited to, areas around the Asia-Pacific countries in a collegial and stimulating environment to present, discuss and disseminate recent advances and new findings on all aspects of vibration and noise, their control and utilization. All aspects of vibration, acoustics, vibration and noise control, vibration utilization, fault diagnosis and monitoring are appropriate for the conference, with the focus this year on the vibration aspects in dynamics and noise & vibration. This 18th edition of the APVC was held in November 2019 in Sydney, Australia. The previous seventeen conferences have been held in Japan (‘85, ’93, ‘07), Korea (’87, ’97, ‘13), China (’89, ’01, ’11, ‘17), Australia (’91, ‘03), Malaysia (’95, ‘05), Singapore (‘99), New Zealand (‘09) and Vietnam (‘15).

This book presents the proceedings of the 20th Polish Control Conference. A triennial event that was first held in 1958, the conference successfully combines its long tradition with a modern approach to shed light on problems in control engineering, automation, robotics and a wide range of applications in these disciplines. The book presents new theoretical results concerning the steering of dynamical systems, as well as industrial case studies and worked solutions to real-world problems in contemporary engineering. It particularly focuses on the modelling, identification, analysis and design of automation systems; however, it also addresses the evaluation of their performance, efficiency and reliability. Other topics include fault-tolerant control in robotics, automated manufacturing, mechatronics and industrial systems. Moreover, it discusses data processing and transfer issues, covering a variety of methodologies, including model predictive, robust and adaptive techniques, as well as algebraic and geometric methods, and fractional order calculus approaches. The book also examines essential application areas, such as transportation and autonomous intelligent vehicle systems, robotic arms, mobile manipulators, cyber-physical systems, electric drives and both surface and underwater marine vessels. Lastly, it explores biological and medical applications of the control-theory-inspired methods.

As new and existing U.S. residential areas and high volume highways continue to intermingle, traffic noise abatement procedures continue to be important. This study investigated the acoustic effectiveness, public acceptance, and structural requirements of various designs and types of sound barriers. In addition, the acoustic effectiveness of a prototype sound barrier is reported. Results are presented on the acoustic effectiveness from in situ measurements of one cement bonded composite panel barrier and four precast concrete, two plywood, two glued-laminated, and three post and panel barriers. The research on public acceptance of sound barriers focused on the perception of visual compatibility. Based on results from semantic-differential and individual ratings, wood and concrete barrier designs were perceived to have favored gbsruralgcs qualities. Data collected during the research on acoustic effectiveness and public acceptance were used to develop structural requirements and construction details for a prototype wood sound barrier. The prototype wood sound barrier provided insertion losses of 15 dB or greater, exceeding the 10-dB acceptable performance for a highway sound barrier.

Environmental Noise Barriers is a unique one-stop reference for practitioners, whether acoustical engineers, landscape architects, or manufacturers, and for highways departments in local and central authorities. This extensively revised new edition is updated in line with UK and EU legislation and international provision of barriers.

Noise pollution generated by transport is acknowledged to be a major environmental problem. This book examines both the acoustic and landscape issues affecting the design of barriers. By addressing the needs of the whole design team, it provides expert guidance on good practice and highlights the pitfalls of poor design. Detailed consideration is g

Highway noise can cause annoyance, affect sleep patterns, and reduce the property value for people in the proximity. Current methods for analyzing the effectiveness of sound barriers only take loudness into consideration. This paper introduces new methods that can be used to analyze the effectiveness of the sound barriers. Our approach uses psychoacoustic measures including sharpness, roughness, fluctuation, strength and annoyance. Highway noise is non-stationary, therefore each of these metrics are calculated over a short time. Finally analysis is performed the distribution and change over time. We used nth nearest neighbor algorithm to remove sounds that are not a part of the experiment. In the future, this data can be combined with human surveys to see if the change in sound quality due to the presence of sound barriers has a meaningful impact on people's lives.