Suspended water droplets as a means of noise reduction

Abstract The propagation of acoustic waves and energy absorption in a medium of air containing suspended water droplets have been investigated experimentally. It has been found that an increase in atomisation pressure or mass flow ratio reduces the size of droplets, thus yielding higher noise reduction. It should be possible to develop an appropriate system, for reducing the noise of hammers or other impact machinery, where the creation of a temporary air-water skirt around the noise source can be synchronised with the blow rate, i.e. the timing of the noise generation.