An experimental study of swinbanks' method of active attenuation of sound in ducts

Abstract

The concept of attenuating sound propagating down a duct by means of an antiphase copy of the sound was first put forward forty years ago, but to date no practical system has been produced. The principal problem is to introduce the antiphase signal in such a way that it propagates only in the direction of propagation of the original sound and to ensure that this property can be maintained over a useful frequency range. A suitable arrangement of secondary sound sources has recently been proposed by Swinbanks and this paper describes experiments carried out in an attempt to realise a practical system. A unidirectional array of secondary sources has been successfully constructed around a rectangular duct, using loudspeaker drive units and electronic delays. Sound propagating in the direction of these sources was sampled and a control signal applied to the sources which in turn acted to significantly reduce the amplitude of the sound. Pure tones at frequencies around 150 Hz have been attenuated by more than 50 dB but results with band-limited noise have been less successful. Further work is suggested which should result in a device having significant advantages over conventional splitter silencers, at low frequencies.