This NAG meeting featured Eric Powell who presented on the graduate project he’s completing for his Master’s of Architectural Engineering degree. Eric is investigating optimal placement of absorption in small rooms to minimize the impact of low-frequency modes. He’s using COMSOL, a finite element modeling program, and is looking into a number of different objective metrics (such as standard deviation across frequency) to quantify the improvement across different configurations of material placement.
There were two acoustic nuggets this week: the Sony Circle Sound Speaker which looks very pretty (shared by Megan Christensen), and a fellow blogger who has posted on how to make your own acoustic panels (shared by Andrew Hathaway). One other item of interest to our group is that Omaha recently revised its noise ordinance. A student in AE 3300 tweeted about this… good thing, because I don’t really have time to read the news myself these days!
A large group of us are planning to attend the ASHRAE Winter Conference in Chicago, January 21-25, 2012. We’ll be attending a performance of Strauss/Beethoven/Dvorak at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall on that Saturday, 1/21, and may try to plan a possible tour of the facility. If you’re going to ASHRAE and want to join us, please let us know!
