June 6, 2024
A vibrating curtain of silk can stifle noise pollution
Inspired by headphone technology, silk sewn with a vibrating fiber acts as a lightweight sound barrier.
Categories:
In the Media, Energy and the Environment
The fabric can suppress sound by generating sound waves that interfere with an unwanted noise to cancel it out (as seen in figure C) or by being held still to suppress vibrations that are key to the transmission of sound (as seen in figure D).
Courtesy of the researchers
A slim sheet of silk could smother noise coming from the other side of a large room, reports Andrew Chapman in Scientific American. DMSE’s Yoel Fink and a multidisciplinary team of researchers have expanded on technology found in noise-canceling headphones to tackle noise pollution, which contributes to stress, sleep problems, and even disease. A piezoelectric fiber stitched into the silk emits sound waves that can cancel out sounds as loud as 65 decibels, roughly the volume of a human conversation. “That was striking to me because it’s a piece of silk [with] the thickness of a hair,” Fink says.
Read the full story in the Scientific American.
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