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Roadways and other items producing unwanted noise may get quieter in the next few years.
A Michigan Tech team has been working on a product that would reduce noise pollution in things we use every day.
Professor Andrew Barnard said, “Our technology is something called a Thermophone. We’re trying to make sound in a pipe go away by injecting the opposite sound into that pipe. It’s a lot like how your noise canceling headphones work on an airplane. We’re just doing it in a pipe instead of at your ears.”
Barnard and his team of student engineers have developed a new type of muffler—one that uses electricity. Essentially, the muffler has a speaker inside of it that inverts the sound waves produced by the vehicle, air conditioners and heavy machinery resulting in a quieter end result.
Student Steven Senczyszyn explains one of his marketing discoveries. “So I go out to people in all different industries and conduct customer interviews. HAVC was one of our unexpected areas but we quickly found that it would be a good starting point for our technology,” said Senczyszyn
Funding for the project comes from MTU’s I Corps program. I Corps is a partnership with the National Science Foundation that brings innovators to Michigan Tech from 22 universities across the country to share research regarding market possibilities and needs of potential buyers.
Barnard said, “The purpose of that is to help professors like me get our technology out of the lab and into the hands of real users.”
Barnard says it may be 6 years or more before this product breaks into the automotive market, but other commercialization possibilities may be achieved sooner.
