New RMIOA Status for Research Students Agreed

 

On 23rd August 2022 at the Annual General Meeting of the Institute of Acoustics a proposal by Professor Stephen Dance was accepted by a vote of the corporate members. The vote was to introduce for the first tie at any professional body that research students by given a special status of Research Member of the Institute of Acoustics, with the post nominals of RMIOA. This will hopefully ensure the integration of research into the previously practitioner lead institute. Fingers Crossed with the UK Acoustic Network help it will work!

The Acoustic Students at Inter-Noise 2022

 
After 4 years of planning - Inter-Noise 2022 happened as an in-person hybrid event in Glasgow, UK. Over 5 days 11 students enjoyed various Early Career Events, with 1/3 of the 1274 delegates coming under this umbrella. Inter-Noise 2022 was pitched to the I-INCE panel by Professor Stephen Dance in Chicago and the decision for Glasgow to host the event was completed vindicated. We hope all the students enjoyed the event, made new contacts and learnt something new!

Presented at Inter-Noise 22: Plenary Address on Acoustic Design for School

 
On the 23rd August 2022 Emeritus Professor Bridget Shield gave the closing address at the Inter-Noise conference. Her selected subject was Acoustic Design of Schools. Bridget gave a history on architectural acoustics and specific acoustic design of school through the 20th Century. She finsihed by providing multiple examples of appropriate and inapproprite results for both primary and secondary school children as well as children with English as a second language and those with hearing impairment. Well done on a fantastically informative presentation!

Not Presented at Inter-Noise: Testing of Alternative Ventilation Ducts

 

On the 23rd August 2022 PhD candidate Suzana Zekic's slides were used by Jack Harvie-Jones to present her research work in a paper entitled, "Experiment acoustic testing of alternative ventilation ducts". Professor Stephen Dance assisted Jack as the slide were covered which focused on plastic ducts in a collaboration with a CIBSE working party of which Jack is a founding member.

Presented at Inter-Noise 22: An Audio-based Vehicle Classifer

 
On the 22nd August 2022 former MSc student Ekim Bakirci presented results from his Masters dissertation in a paper entitled, "An audio based vehicle classifier using a convolutional neural network". Ekim demonstrated that 7 different types of vehicle could be classified after training for identification on rural or low use roads with 95%+ accuracy.

Presented at Inter-Noise 22: How much Diffusio is Too Much in a Concert Hall

On the 21st Augut 2022 former MSc student Michae Fort presented his Masters dissertation work in a paper entitled, "Using non-wave based modelling to explore how mich acoustic diffusion is too much in a concert hall?" In the Computer simulation and Modelling session Michael showed results of several halls using CATT-Acoustic based simulation with varying amount of surface diffusion. 

 

Presented at Inter-Noise 22: Effect of Face Masks on Speech Intelligiblity

 
On the 22nd August 2022 MSc student Ruben Vazquez Amos presented his on-going Masters work together with James Green written up in a paper entitled, "Effect of Face Masks on Speech Intelligiblity". Ruben showed that results from Head and Torso experiments did not agree with results fro actual people in terms of sound attenuation and were significantly different for speech intellgibility at critical important frequencies. More work will follow.  

Presented at Inter-Noise 22: Otoacoustic Emission as a Hearing Assessment Tool

On the 22nd August 2022 former PhD student, Georgia Zepidou presented the latest research in collaboration with Professor Stephen Dance. In a paper entitled, "Comparison of Pure Tone Audiometry and Otoacoustic Emission based Hearing Assessment for Classical Music Students". This work was a follow up to Georgia's audiometric study and demonstrated that OAE identified more students at risk from hearing damage.  

Presented at Inter-Noise: The Effect of Paint on Fabric

 
On the 22nd August 2022 former MSc student Angela Diaz Mena presented her Masters dissertation work in a paper entitled, "Acoustic and aesthetics- the effect of paint on a fabric backed sound absorber". Angela had a myriad of questions on paint covering and coverage in the Materials session.

Presented at Inter-Noise 22: Acoustic of Panels made from Teabags

 
On the 22nd August 2022 former MSc student Stefano Mundula presented his Masters dissertation work in a paper entitled, Acoustic wave propagation through panels made of used tea bags".  In a session on Materials Stefano explained that teabags have good absorptive properties but did not smell when dried.

Presenting at Inter-Noise 22: Subwoofers in a Roman Theatre

 

On the 22nd August 2022 former student Claus Kopplin presented his Masters dissertation work in a paper entitled, "Subwoofer array design for optimal performance and minimal noise pollution in a Roman theatre". Claus hang a subwoofer array 4m in the air and demonstrated this reduced the low frequency noise levels at the nearest residences.

Presenting at Inter-Noise: Life Boat Helmet Intelligibility

 

On the 21st August 2022 former MSc student Stephen Jay presented his Masters dissertation work in a paper entitled, "The attenuation and speech intelligibility of the Gecko helmet used by the Royal National Lifeboat Institute". Stephen showed a dramatic video of him rescuing a person in a sinking car to illustrate communication difficulties. 

Presenting at Inter-Noise 22: Improving Intelligibility in Underground Stations

 

On 21st August 2022 fomer MSc student Diego Cordes presented his Masters dissertation work in a paper entitled, "Improving the intelligibility of underground station public address using horizontal Line arrays" in the Modelling and Simulation session. Diego used CATT-Acoustic to represent 1000+ sound sources in an underground station which demonstrated an 8% improvement in speech intelligiblity.

Presenting at Inter-Noise 22: Effect of Audiences in Music Venues

On the 21st August 2022 former MSc student Rebeca Sanchez presented her Masters dissertation project in a paper entitled, "Acoustic effects of elevanted platforms for standing audiences in an indoor music venue" in the Acoustics of Performance Space session. Rebeca showed using CATT-Acoustics how intellgibility was effected by a slight raising of the audience platfom.

 

Presenting at Inter-Noise 22: Sound Recording Space Versatility

 

On the 21st August 2022 at Inter-Noise 22 former MSc student, Stavros Tagios presenting his Masters dissertation in a paper entitled, "Parametric design of a module acoustic panel for sound recording space versatiliy". Stavros used Rhino with acoustic plug-ins to model the effect of box type absorbers in three recording studios. 

Presentations at Inter-Noise 22: the Quiet Project

 

On the 21st August 2022 MSc student Henry Kowalik presented his analysis of the Quiet Project dataset in a paper entitled, "Resuts from the Quiet Project: UK Acoustic Community's response to COVID19". An engaged audience were interested in the weather conditions and further analysis which will be undertaken in a future project. 

At Inter-Noise 22 the Acoustics Group chaired sessions

 

On the 24th August 2022 the Acoustics Group chaired multiple sessionat Inter-Noise 22. Professor Bridget Shield co-chaired Acoustics and Education session jointly with Arianna Alstofi from Turin University. Professor Stephen Dance organised the Modelling and Numerical Simulation theme and chaired the Computational Acoustic session and the Acoustics of Performance Spaces session. Both on-line and in-person questions were asked by the delegates at this, the first ever Inter-Noise hybird meeting,

New kit arrives - Svantek 958A noise and vibration meter

On the 17th August 2022 the Acoustics Group received a new Svantek 958A noise and vibration Class 1 sound level meter. This kit is to be used for structural acoustics research projects, allowing environmental noise and triaxial vibration measurements to be undertaken simultaneously..

 

Frontiers for Young Minds Paper Published on Classroom Acoustics

 

On the 17th August 2022 Frontiers for Young Minds published an educational paper, "Acoustics of Classrooms" in a special edition curated by the UK Acoustics Network (UKAN) Christian Sumner. The paper was written by Professor Stephen Dance and Dr Eric Ballestero and reviewed by Year 7 school children. Many thanks to them for their really useful feedback!