Development of a tuned vibro-acoustic absorber for a clothes washer application

摘要

Marketing of quiet products has driven the appliance industry further towards demonstrating alow noise level while maintaining functionality. Manufacturers have incorporated increasinglysophisticated methods of design to reduce development time and increase confidence in theresulting appliance sound level. The ability to develop noise control materials and systems withperformance beyond that of simple absorbers or mass loaded materials provide more effectivenoise control solutions from both a cost and performance basis. Utilization of customized tunedabsorbers can provide a robust noise control solution for a single appliance platform withoutnecessarily negatively affecting the manufacturing cost of the appliance. By manipulating theparameters of the constituent noise control materials, optimum performance can be obtained.Such a tuned absorption material system has been created and validated. A discussion of themodeling and comparison of the validation test data is presented in this paper.