Technical Activities

INCE-USA sponsors Technical Activities in 17 topics related to noise control.

Hether Fedullo is Vice President of Technical Activities for INCE-USA. She chairs the Technical Activities Board, comprised of the 17 Technical Activity Committee Chairs. These Chairs are INCE-USA Members who help:

  1. Produce special sessions at INCE-USA conferences, and
  2. Organize special theme issues of the Noise Control Engineering Journal (NCEJ).

The Technical Activities Board meets on the first evening (typically Monday, 7:00 PM local time) of NOISECON conferences and US-organized Internoise Congresses.

Suggestions for conference session titles, volunteers for organizing and participating in conference sessions, and ideas for special issues of NCEJ are always welcome. Please contact the relevant Committee Chair (see the contact information below) if you are interested in becoming involved in INCE-USA Technical Activities.

The scope of each Committee, and contact information for its Chair, is listed below.

INCE-USA Technical Activities Committees and their Chairs


Acoustic Materials

Chairs: Tyler Dare and David Herrin

The objective of the committee is to promote activities and disseminate information in passive control of noise and vibration. Areas of interest include, but are not confined to, analytical, computational, and experimental efforts on:

  • reactive, dissipative, and hybrid mufflers and silencers;
  • flow noise and suppression;
  • flow-acoustic coupling and suppression;
  • flow-structure interaction; and
  • acoustical materials used for sound absorption, damping, vibration isolation, structures, and sound barriers.?

Aeroacoustic Noise

Chair: Yong-Joe Kim

This technical committee is focused on aeroacoustic noise generated from airflow. In particular, the committee promotes activities addressing technical issues involving aeroacoustic noise generation, propagation, transmission, and suppression using analytical, computational, and experimental approaches.


Building Acoustics

Chairs: Greg Coudriet, Jeanette Hesedahl and Melinda Miller

The Building Acoustics Technical Committee seeks to advance the industry’s understanding of noise control in the built environment to improve occupant health, safety, and welfare. The Committee’s goals are accomplished by organizing technical sessions at INCE conferences, encouraging the publication of papers on related topics, and disseminating relevant information to the Noise Control Engineering community, American Institute of Architects, American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers, other professional groups, and the public.

The committee identifies relevant topics through two means:

  1. the consulting practices of acoustical consultants on the committee; and
  2. standards activities related to building acoustics.

Primary topics include criteria for sound quality in buildings, acoustical performance of building materials and noise control products, prediction of sound levels in buildings, sound propagation through building structures, and sound produced by building systems. Measurement and modeling techniques to predict noise generation and propagation in buildings are also included.

Examples of recent topics include:

  • “Case study: Teaching hospital design with FGI acoustical criteria,” InterNoise 2015, San Francisco CA, 9-12 August (2015).
  • “Mitigation of gym noise and vibration in mixed-use buildings,” Inter-Noise 2015, San Francisco CA, 9-12 August (2015).
  • “Elevator noise reduction in a high rise luxury condominium,” InterNoise 2015, San Francisco CA, 9-12 August (2015).
  • “Case study of a 10-story office building with four 200,000 CFM fan-wall arrays,” InterNoise 2015, San Francisco CA, 9-12 August (2015).

Community Noise

Chair: Mark Storm
Committee members: Frank Brittain, Bennett Brooks, Ken Kaliski

The Technical Committee on Community Noise (TCCN) was formed for the purpose of promoting the use of noise control engineering technologies and adequate noise management policies to reduce noise exposure in communities across America to levels necessary to adequately protect the health and welfare of the US population. To fulfill these objectives, INCE TCCN will pursue the following general priorities:

  1. Promote the development and use of state-of-the-art noise control technologies, including providing information on these technologies to the public and relevant government agencies
  2. Promote sponsorship and conduct of high priority research on the effects of noise, including health effects, community annoyance and sleep disturbance research
  3. Support the development of up-to-date national and local government noise management and land use policies, including increased cooperation between industry, government and the public on noise control issues
  4. Support programs to educate the public on the adverse effects of community and environmental noise exposure
  5. Support the continued professional development of the noise control engineering field and promotion of their services to communities
  6. Coordinate INCE/USA community noise activities with those of other national and international professional acoustics organizations and government agencies

Experimental Techniques, Instrumentation, Signal Processing and Active Noise Control

Chair: Yang Fan Liu

The committee acts as a forum for the dissemination of information and research results on experimental and instrumentation methods in the fields of noise and vibration control, and acoustics. This forum is established through periodic meetings at NOISE-CON and INTER-NOISE conferences, sessions organized at these conferences, and the organization of seminars or short courses in conjunction with these same conferences. From these conferences, the committee will work with the Noise Control Engineering Journal editor to identify papers of special merit for inclusion in the Journal. In addition, the committee strives to provide an interface to international and national groups on relevant experimental and measurement procedures, facilitate the coalition of divergent approaches to the same experimental and measurement problems, and act as a resource for those seeking information on current experimental and instrumentation developments.


Industrial Noise

Chair: David Copley

The primary focus of the Industrial Noise Control Committee is to exchange technical information on the methods to reduce noise and vibration of industrial machinery. Industrial machinery by definition is portable and stationary machinery that is 100 horsepower or greater. Examples of industrial machinery include farming equipment, highway construction portable equipment, mining equipment, compressors, centrifugal pumps, pneumatic and hydraulic pumps, rock drilling equipment, portable power generators, oil refinery machinery, and manufacturing machinery. The committee provides a forum for exchange of technical information related to the management of machinery noise and vibration. Areas of interest to the Committee include new product development, manufacturing, and fielding issues. In particular, the Committee seeks to do the following:

  1. organize sessions for NOISE-CON and INTER-NOISE meetings;
  2. sponsor specialized workshops and seminars in conjunction with NOISE-CON conferences or INTER-NOISE congresses;
  3. encourage INCE members and others to publish, in Noise News International and the Noise Control Engineering Journal, case histories as well as accounts of successful programs and approaches related to the management of industrial noise;
  4. serve as an information exchange and clearinghouse for members and others interested in the management of industrial noise;
  5. form alliances with other professional and trade organizations whose charters overlap or complement those of the Committee;
  6. develop, provide, and/or advertise the availability of educational materials for members and others to use in their outreach and guidance programs.

Example technical areas that we addressed in past conferences include:

  • developing new products for low noise emission using computational fluid dynamics,
  • a recent patent application on Jackhammer chisel noise,
  • testing issues with large industrial mufflers and the problems presented from the muffler breakout noise,
  • new methods for planning industrial sites that are optimized to reduce industrial noise, and
  • the application of an acoustic camera for machinery maintenance and noise control.

Future conferences will continue to present a range of topics on industrial noise control that include applications of modeling, simulation, and testing.


Information Technology Equipment (ITE)

Chair:  Marco Beltman

The scope of the Information Technology Equipment Technical Sub-Committee is noise control engineering relating to information technology equipment (ITE), with a primary focus on acoustical measurement technology, methodology, and standardization. In addition to organizing special sessions at INCE conferences and soliciting technical papers for NCEJ, the principal activities of the Committee are to monitor, elucidate, and continually reevaluate the technical underpinnings of the acoustical standards and test codes pertinent to the ITE industry. Given that our members are volunteers with limited time and resources, the activities undertaken by the committee should meet the following practical criteria:

  1. can be reasonably handled by the resources available;
  2. are directly related to the mission of the TC/ITE;
  3. are important to the IT industry as a whole;
  4. are timely, in terms of work being done by other committees allied to the IT industry (such as standards writing groups);
  5. are of strong interest to a majority of the TC members or potential TC members;
  6. are within the realm of expertise of the TC members or potential TC members; and
  7. are of a nonproprietary nature to allow competing firms to cooperate freely.

The results of TC/ITE activities should benefit either INCE members in general or members of working groups developing standards and test codes for the ITE industry.

Current activity includes review and update of IT noise emissions standards including ECMA-74, ISO 7779, ANSI S12.10 and others. Development of new methods for measurement and evaluation of tones.


Motor Vehicle Noise

Chairs: Hether FedulloSteve Sorenson, Gordon Ebbitt, and Andrea Frey

This committee is focused on the importance of understanding and managing motor vehicle noise and vibration, both interior and exterior.  We will organize technical sessions for NoiseCon and INCE/USA-sponsored InterNoise conferences and maintain strong connections with organizations such as SAE.  

Topics of interest include vehicle noise sources and propagation, modeling, experimental techniques, regulatory aspects, subjective perception and practical case studies.

Examples of recent topics include:

  • “Acoustic characteristics and design refinement in electric vehicle development,” InterNoise 2015, San Francisco CA, 9-12 August (2015).
  • “Vibroacoustic modeling of a trimmed truck cab in the mid frequency range,” Inter-Noise 2015, San Francisco CA, 9-12 August (2015).
  • “Auralization of ambient noise in vehicles,” Noise-Con 2014, Fort Lauderdale Florida, 8-10 September (2014).
  • “A comparative study of the acoustic behavior of porous duct using simulation and testing,” Noise-Con 2014, Fort Lauderdale Florida, 8-10 September (2014).

We achieve this objective by:

  1. organizing technical sessions at the NOISE-CON Conference and INTER-NOISE Congress and Exposition, thereby creating an effective exchange environment between research and application communities; and
  2. encouraging participants to publish their works in the Noise Control Engineering Journal.

Perception and Effects of Noise

Chairs: Shashikant More, Gabriella Cerrato

This group has focused on organizing sessions for conferences and one-day symposia associated with INCE and international INCE meetings. Topics of interest include:

  1. Sound quality modeling: metrics, psychoacoustic testing, standardization
  2. Binaural sound quality
  3. Sound quality of environmental sounds
  4. Designing the sound of products
  5. Influence of attributes other than loudness on sound quality
  6. Human response to vibration and coupling of response to noise and vibration
  7. Modeling and predicting annoyance including the influence of information and context on response modeling
  8. Surveying and psychoacoustic testing techniques

Prediction and Modeling Techniques

Chair: Chad Musser

This committee provides a forum for the dissemination and sharing of information, progress and applications related to computer analysis methods or software to noise control and acoustic problems.

Predictive methods or codes of interest include:

  • finite and boundary element methods,
  • statistical energy analysis,
  • ray tracing,
  • transfer matrix methods, and
  • other computational techniques for addressing interior and exterior sound propagation and radiation issues including interactions with vibrating structures and other media.

We establish a clear forum on the applicability of existing or new software and numerical techniques to contemporary noise control concerns in industries or society. To facilitate this important task, the committee organizes special technical sessions for NOISE-CON and INTER-NOISE meetings, solicits authoritative papers for Noise Control Engineering Journal, and provides a forum for its members in maintaining and developing the science and art of computer modeling. Other activities include the formulation of benchmark noise control problems for analysis verification, organizing round-robin modeling exercises, and liaison with other technical committees or professional societies.


Product Noise Emissions

Chairs:Kevin Herreman and Seth Bard

The scope of the Product Noise Emissions Technical Committee is noise emission from products in general, without focusing on a specific product type or family. "Products" include small and large household appliances, information technology products, home entertainment products, power tools, lawn and garden equipment, air-conditioning products, medical equipment, test instrumentation, and many others. Transport vehicles, outdoor construction equipment, and typically large industrial equipment are not included in the scope of this committee.

The committee is primarily concerned with the fundamental aspects of acoustical measurement technology, methodology, and standardization as they are applied to products in general. Our scope also includes methods for disseminating information on product noise emissions to consumers and the general public, such as product noise declarations and labels. 

Noise control topics may be considered when appropriate, but these are usually better placed under the Passive Control and Active Control Technical Committees. Similarly, the perceptual aspects of product noise emissions are not included in this scope since these are addressed in the Perception and Effects of Noise TC.

One of the goals of this committee is to sponsor sub-committees dealing with particular product families that will address noise emission issues specific to that family and that will develop measurement and declaration test codes specific to their industries. The Sub-Committee on ITE is an example of this (even though it has existed as a separate TC long before the establishment of this parent TC).

Current activity includes development of a new scheme for rating the noise emission levels of products for the general public.


Sources & Propagation

Chairs: Victor Sparrow, Kai Ming Li, and Natalia Sizov

This committee brings together INCE members with interests related to noise sources and how that noise propagates to the listener. Regarding noise sources the committee promotes characterizing noise sources, understanding their radiation mechanisms, and devising noise control methodologies via source modification. Regarding propagation the committee seeks improved methods for measuring and predicting the propagation of noise through both structures and the air. Source alteration techniques, outdoor and indoor sound propagation, and scattering and diffraction are all within the purview of the sources and propagation technical committee.

The committee is committed both to developing new understanding of how the sound from real noise sources is generated and gets to the listener and to applying engineering principles to minimize the noise.


Standards

Chair: Jack Zybura

This technical activity represents the technical interests of INCE-USA in the development of national and international consensus standards in acoustics and vibrations.

INCE-USA is a voting member in the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Committee S12 on Noise, and the U.S. TAG to ISO/TC 43/SC1, which develop standards, specifications, and terminology in the field of acoustical noise. The INCE-USA Standards Chair serves as the primary INCE-USA representative to both committees and contributes input to the development and systematic review of standards and other documents.

Full Members of INCE-USA may participate in reviewing these standards by request. Members may browse the standards currently open for review here:

     Standards Open for Review [Members-Only Access]


Structural Acoustics

Chairs: Rabah Hadjit and Bhisham Sharma

The Structural Acoustics technical committee is focused on the vibration of structures leading to noise generation in a variety of systems. The activity includes the prediction, design, and measurement of structural vibration and methodologies to mitigate transmission of vibration and subsequent noise generation. The activity promotes special sessions & paper submissions leveraging fundamental structural-acoustic concepts.

  • improve noise control technology
  • understand source mechanisms
  • improve numerical modeling practices

Examples of recent topics include:


Transportation Noise

Chairs: Micah Downing and Judy Rochat

The Transportation Noise Technical Committee will provide forums for the exchange of technical and regulatory information related to the transportation industry. A major thrust of the technical exchanges will be the dissemination of applied research directed toward addressing transportation noise issues and concerns. Technical topics will cover noise and vibration tests, analysis and processes that are related to surface and air transportation noise concerns from customer and regulatory perspectives. Current topics of interest include:
  • Health effects of transportation noise
  • Effects of transportation noise on historical and natural resources
  • Evaluating and mitigating high-speed rail noise and vibration
  • Evaluating and mitigating noise from supersonic aircraft and rockets. 

Wind Turbine Noise

Chairs: Rob O'Neal and Kenneth Kaliski

The Wind Turbine Noise Technical Activity Committee is focused on the education of INCE members and the broader community on wind turbine noise, its generation, control, prediction, policy and regulation. It serves as a professional forum for the exchange of technical ideas and the dissemination of science-based information. It supports the promotion of unified practices for noise measurement, modeling and other related topics by encouraging papers to be presented at Internoise and NOISE-CON sessions and workshops on wind turbine noise.

Examples of recent topics include:

  • “Self-reported and objectively measured outcomes assessed in the Health Canada Wind Turbine Noise and Heath study: Results support an increase in community annoyance,” InterNoise 2015, San Francisco CA, 9-12 August (2015).
  • “Practical methods for measuring and assessing wind turbine noise,” InterNoise 2015, San Francisco CA, 9-12 August (2015).
  • “Kingston Massachusetts wind turbine acoustical study,” InterNoise 2015, San Francisco CA, 9-12 August (2015).
  •  “Perception of low frequency components in wind turbine noise,” Noise Control Engineering Journal, Volume 62, Number 5, 1 September 2014, pp. 295-305(11).
  • “Large-scale calculation of possible locations for specific wind turbines under consideration of noise limits,” Noise-Con 2013, Denver Colorado, 26-28 August (2013).

Sustaining Members

  • Acentech
  • CT
  • CGA
  • ECORE
  • GERB
  • Herrick
  • Hush Soundproofing
  • Illingworth
  • NCE
  • PLITEQ
  • SVI Dynamics Logo small
  • PSU
  • Seti Media
  • Wilson Ihrig