Machine Acoustics

The Machine Acoustics Group at SAM investigates methods to improve the sound quality of machines on both component and system level. On one hand, relevant machine guidelines must be complied with, whereby sound is preferably reduced at the source (primary noise control engineering). On the other hand, the acoustic properties of components and systems must be specifically designed. For this purpose, SAM develops modeling techniques to reliably obtain acoustic properties in early stages of product development processes. Such models improve the understanding of structure-borne and airborne sound propagation and predict how parameter changes affect acoustic properties. The fundamental equation of machine acoustics, which was already developed at the end of the 1960s at the then Department of “Machine Elements and Transmissions” under Prof. Dr.-Ing. Herbert W. Müller, serves as a guideline for modeling. Today, the Machine Acoustics Group pursues the goal of mastering the fundamental equation of machine acoustics completely in a digital manner. Thus, it combines the knowledge of several decades with current product development processes and develops advanced methods and signal processing techniques for machine acoustics.