Noise-canceling single-layer woven silk and cotton fabric

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202313328

by bookofjoe • 2 years ago

172 114 2 years ago

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

jcims2• 2 years ago

Apologies for the ADHD induced tangent. Has anyone else noticed that regular little party balloons seem to have a passive noise cancelling effect? If you bring them close to your ear there's a zone of 'dead air' when they are maybe an inch away. My theory was that there's something in passing through the rubber envelope that creates a phase delay or inversion, but it could just all be in my head lol.

jareklupinski• 2 years ago

im curious about replicating this

elicash• 2 years ago

Do you see a difference regardless of helium or air? I assume from your description that it has to be inflated to work.

bithive123• 2 years ago

Helium is apparently great for soundproofing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxOzpPJbnTI (a great demonstration of sound suppressing properties of helium)

I am a light sleeper and would love to use it somehow in my bedroom, but keeping it contained is tricky.

tasty_freeze2• 2 years ago

It seems like the effect would be very frequency specific.

tastyfreeze2• 2 years ago

Having filled a room with balloons, this is very noticeable. It also make heating the room difficult.

roflmaostc• 2 years ago

heating difficult? Why would that be?

tasty_freeze2• 2 years ago

Holy cow, I read your comment and thought, "Wait, I didn't write that!" Nice to meet you, doppleganger.

benplumley• 2 years ago

Could it be an interaction between static electricity from the balloon and tiny elements in the ear?

codazoda• 2 years ago

My wife makes balloon arches and I've never noticed but this sounds fascinating. Maybe I'll get her to work, for "science". :P

Note: Her balloons are not typically helium filled, so the other users question about air/helium might make a difference.

Tade0• 2 years ago

The latex from which the balloon is made is a decent soundproofing material, so what you're hearing is likely just that.

LikelyClueless• 2 years ago

it maybe acting as an acoustic lens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLBmWF9Xo10

edit: Steve Mould's video "I Made a Lens, But for Sound" demonstrates how balloons filled with gasses of different density than the surrounding air, act as a lens on sound waves. Helium filled balloons will scatter sound because the helium is less dense than air. He shows how a balloon filled with carbon dioxide can focus the sound.

0xbadcafebee• 2 years ago

Somebody wrote a paper on it in 2008: https://physics.byu.edu/docs/publication/644

  A balloon filled with a gas that has a different sound speed than that of air has been used as an
  acoustic lens. One purpose of the lens is to show refraction of sound waves in an analogy to
  geometric optics. We discuss the physics of the balloon lens demonstration. To determine the
  validity of a gas-filled balloon as a classroom demonstration of an acoustic lens and to understand
  the corresponding phenomena, its physics is considered analytically, numerically, and
  experimentally. Our results show that although a geometric analogy is a good first-order
  approximation, scattering theory is required to fully understand the observed phenomena. Thus this
  demonstration can be adapted to a wide range of students, from those learning the basic principles
  of refraction to advanced students studying scattering

Here's Harvard demonstrating it too: https://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/presentations/...

kurthr• 2 years ago

At the old Exploratorium in the Palace of Fine Arts there was an exhibit that had a large 3-4m balloon filled with something heavy (Argon or maybe SF6?) and two points on the floor at the foci of the balloon. You could whisper at one focus and hear it easily at the other. I think it has been replaced with a more durable pair of concrete parabolic reflectors with similar effects.

jcims2• 2 years ago

Oh dang! I bet that's it! Nice find, thank you!

Brian_K_White• 2 years ago

Do other smooth surface spherical objects have the same effect?

Sound reflects off smooth surfaces. The ballon is probably just acting like any simple physical obstruction, because the surface does a lot all by itself even if theres almost no substance.

The air inside the ballon is also at a different density than outside, without helium, because of the elastic tension in the rubber. The air inside is always slightly compressed vs outside. I have no idea how much the two densities must differ to make the accoustic lense effect. I din't think it's this, just everyone seemed to be overlooking that even plain air will also have a different density.

chipsa• 2 years ago

Density does not affect the speed of sound of a gas. Temperature and molar mass does. So increasing the pressure of a given composition of gas won’t change anything, assuming you can bring the temp back down. Helium is obviously a different molar mass. But also dry air vs moist air can have an effect.

metalman• 2 years ago

just the humidity level in the gas used to fill a balloon is going to have a significant effect on its properties, human breath will have more c02 that air and s higher humidity. Any canned pressurised gas, will be pure with zero humidity. Heating exchange works through convection cells, the greater the number and the smaller they are, the lower covective heat transfer will happen, so filling a room with balloons, and you have made foam, and at that point the acoustical properties must be pronounced fun stuff The activity of silk working as a sound absorber is its property of bieng one of(the) best heat conductive substances, and as a basic fact, all sound is eventualy turned into heat The silk is presumably working to convert the mechanicsl motioninduced by sound into heat, quickly disapating it and releasing it to the air.

amarcheschi• 2 years ago

Definitely

hinkley4• 2 years ago

Balloon hats for autistic and sensitive people.

atoav2• 2 years ago

Cool stuff, especially for applications where space is at a premium and the adaptability of the material is at a premium.

circlefavshape• 2 years ago

Really useful for audio in a small space if this lives up to its promise. Absorbing low-frequency sound currently requires a lot of space

atoav2• 2 years ago

Exactly, and I guess there is potential in layering this and create way more compact absorbers.

bogwog• 2 years ago

Sound, an omnipresent sensory stimulator, holds significant relevance in the human experience, as it continually engages our auditory and mental faculties.

This first sentence makes it seem as if the paper was written by aliens. Not even deaf people would gain anything from that sentence.

I think LLMs have caused me to be more perceptive to and annoyed by stuff like this.

Etheryte• 2 years ago

Writing like this makes me sigh, exhaling air, the omnipresent chemical stimulator, which holds significant relevance in the human experience, as it continually engages our biological and mental faculties.

bawolff3• 2 years ago

I think your sentence demonstrates the difference between trying to fake "sounding smart" and just writing in a complex way.

Like seriously, "[exhaling air] continually engages our [...] mental faculties" is pretty nonsensical, since breathing is something autonomic. "Omnipresent chemical simulator" seems irrelavent in context. All in all, its a nonsense sentence

Now compare with the original sentence. Its an introduction to the paper. They are trying to establish why they are doing the research they are doing and why you should care. And it tells you - we did research into sound dapening because sound is all around us and its constantly effecting us. Which is something as a human i find to be true - the modern (urban) world is quite noisy. When there is too much noise it can be mentally exhausting and can tax my ability to understand those around me. After reading that sentence I now know why they are researching this area, and agree it is a worthy thing to research. That introductory sentence did everything an introductory sentence to a paper is supposed to do.

Sure, they use some fancy words, but they aren't even that fancy. It is a formal paper, i think high school level reading ability can be presumed.

bawolff3• 2 years ago

Its low on informational content, but as an introductory sentence seems fine to me.

troyvit• 2 years ago

Yeah I kinda liked it. It made me stop and listen where I was, realizing all the weird noises happening around me that I was mentally trying to cancel out.

marcosdumay• 2 years ago

It's very motivational. IMO, my answer to it is a sound "hell, yeah! can you help with it?"

But the way it's written is bad. The OP would have a point if the complaint was about the form, and not the contents. Whatever makes people believe they have to write papers this way (whether it's true or not) needs fixing.

PrismCrystal• 2 years ago

That first sentence has been a totally standard way to open a research paper for at least twenty years now. (As I have seen from both publishing myself, and as a side gig, doing editing of myriad papers by non-native English speakers working in many other branches of the sciences.) A writer has to start somewhere, and that has always been a matter of social convention.

nyc_data_geek1• 2 years ago

How do you do, fellow humans?

kspacewalk2• 2 years ago

My thesis supervisor used excessively flowery language like that in papers, and I had to have a few tugs with him over needless verbosity all while learning to write a paper for the first time. I think there's a subconscious "look at how wise I am" whiff that comes off this type of writing. And sure, yes, impressive, but let's leave creative writing to creative writers. As a scientist, you should instead be focusing on communicating a (probably complex enough) idea as clearly and as simply as you possibly can - just not any simpler.

By the time I wrote my thesis, I was far more assertive in politely declining many of his edits.

bookofjoe• 2 years ago

When I was a research fellow in anesthesiology, my supervisor constantly made edits that seemed to me unnecessary, almost as if he felt it was required of him to demonstrate his mastery.

After he changed something I'd revised per his instructions back to my original copy I decided I'd had enough: I revised only where I thought it improved the papers and ignored the rest.

He never said a thing.

bane• 2 years ago

My English professors in college beat this kind of stuff out of the students. One went so far as to grade all papers that started with something like "since time immemorial, man has..." with an F.

RandomThoughts32• 2 years ago

The issue here is not so much that it’s flowery but that it’s completely unremarkable, bordering on a truism, in its content. The sentence literally means: sound is relevant because you constantly hear it.

krageon• 2 years ago

I spent years implementing natural language processing papers and I learned to my incredible dismay most of them are incredibly simple and do their level best to hide this by writing the most impenetrable prose you can find. Sometimes I sincerely miss being a child and believing most people are doing their best and aren't fundamentally kind of shit.

visarga• 2 years ago

It is just setting the problem space. It doesn't convey anything but a topic.

trgn3• 2 years ago

Given the obsequious near limitless tolerance we extend to operators of loud ICE engines in the public realm, I don't think this is nearly stressed enough.

sephamorr• 2 years ago

I entirely agree that there is substantial tolerance for vehicle noise tolerance and this drives me crazy. Cities aren't loud, cars are! I just want to make clear though that replacing the ICE part with electric engines solves the problem for low speeds only -- once they're going at a reasonable speed, engine noise doesn't dominate (if you exclude the antisocial behaviors of deliberately loud vehicles, most motorbikes).

fullstop3• 2 years ago

I'm seriously considering moving because I live near an interstate. By near, I mean about a mile away, but the trucks with the straight pipe exhausts that engine brake drive me _bonkers_. On top of those, the sound just carries sometimes. I can't see the highway from my house, so it's not a line-of-sight thing, just acoustics.

I've started recording the outdoor sound levels using a USB sound meter: https://i.imgur.com/IdYdhA8.png

When the quietest it gets is above 55 decibels, I don't like being outside. It's not just cars passing by, it is a pulsating drone which never ends.

OJFord• 2 years ago

From the way that paragraph continues:

The importance of sound is underscored by its dual nature, serving as both a vital tool for communication and a potential source of harm, exemplified by the pervasive issue of noise pollution.[1] Considered to be a public health issue by the World Health Organization, unwanted noise can have harmful health effects on people who are chronically exposed to it.[1-5] In the US alone, an estimated 145 million people are exposed to hazardous noise levels.[5] To suppress noise levels, both active and passive solutions are used.

I suspect it may be angling to funding or a journal/conference purpose or something? Without that, the rest of the paper's not really going to care about noise pollution, even if it potentially indirectly offers a way to mitigate it.

eyegor• 2 years ago

For papers sometimes you need to hit a page count to make your sponsor/advisor/conference happy. I've been told "this is a great paper but can you pad it out to 12pgs?", maybe that happened here as well.

lofaszvanitt• 2 years ago

It shakes up people, reminding them how shallow their vocabulary really is.

hammock3• 2 years ago

"Sound is everywhere, and fills our ears and minds" doesnt quite have the same PhD level ring to it (pun intended)

piyh• 2 years ago

I enjoy having an LLM rewrite my shit posts as if it was a PhD research paper.

rrr_oh_man• 2 years ago

Welcome to academia.

omegaworks• 2 years ago

Incredibly important for the comfort and wellbeing of space travelers. Imagine being in an enclosed box compacted as efficiently as possible next to thrusters and life support equipment. The noise must be insane. At the same time, current noise suppression materials have to be heavy. Every gram saved is worth its weight in gold.

skrbjc• 2 years ago

The Tines would kill for this tech.

Terretta2• 2 years ago

Woof.

optimer• 2 years ago

Talking about noise-cancelling fabric, I recently wondered:

Is it possible to noise-isolate my bed?

I live in a beautiful apartment in my favorite part of the city. But the neighbors on some nights are extremely noisy.

If I could noise-isolate my bed, that would be a huge quality of life improvement.

I was thinking about putting some noise absorbing material under the bed feet and a large noise blocking curtain over it. Like a baldachin or canopy bed.

Do you guys think that would work?

adamweld• 2 years ago

It's probably not going to be possible to completely silence your neighbors, but I'm sure there are a few things you can do to make a difference.

If noise is transmitted through the floor, add thick carpet and support your bed with a vibration deadening material, e.g. something viscoelastic. Sorbothane is popular for this but you'll need to spread the load out or pick a high durometer (stiff) rubber.

For the walls, hang up some carpets or similar, and/or hang heavy material around your bed as a canopy as you suggest. What you want is a material that's heavy enough that the energy in the sound waves is dissipated trying to move it around. Maybe a weighted blanket, or a duvet cover stuffed with mass loaded vinyl (used in cars for sound deadening).

askvictor• 2 years ago

Some noise dampening could work but probably won't get rid of all of the noise. You might want to look at a white-noise generator of some sort - I've recently discovered such a function on my (smart-but-now-antiquated) clock/radio. I use a rain sound but there are plenty of options out there. It does wonders for my sleep when there's a party in the neighbourhood or the pigeons are partying on my roof.

mystifyingpoi2• 2 years ago

Get a good quality earplugs, but these real ones, made for musicians, not the single-use foam crap.

coolspot• 2 years ago

Musicians’ ear plugs are designed to let music go through, just not dangerous levels of pressure. I am very sensitive to sounds and I have tried many earplugs. Foam single-use plugs are the best.

joveian• 2 years ago

I've looked into this before and unfortunately it is quite difficult to get good sound isolation and the answer is basically no. The really effective stuff is mass vinyl and as the name suggests it is quite heavy (and expensive). There are even some tents that musicians sometimes use for a few people to play together in a noisy environment that are hundreds of pounds without even being large enough for a bed. As I understand it, the mass is necessary for the best sound dampening. Also, once you get non-trivial sound dampening the way you let air in tends to be the easiest way for sound to get in. Even the heaviest cloth curtains would mostly help with any echos in your room rather than the initial sound itself. Maybe in some circumstances even minimal sound reduction would be helpful but you may also do a bunch of work and find it ends up making no difference.

Noise generators seem like the better way to start if you aren't using one already. I haven't tried many options but from the reviews I've seen fans are the best at this. In my experience ceiling fans do help quite a bit and there are some bedside noise generators that are fans but enclosed to limit the external air movement if the noise happens in colder weather. There are also some with speakers that play recorded fan noise, although beware of ones where the sample loops too quickly (I'm not sure what the best option to use your own recording would be). Unfortunately even getting to the point where you don't wake up (at least not enough to notice) may not fully remove the impact but it would still help quite a bit.

lewispollard• 2 years ago

As a musician who plays the drum set, the typical wisdom is that noise isolation is basically impossible unless you're willing to build a "room within a room" that allows you to construct a heavy, physical insulating barrier between the inner and outer room.

ajb• 2 years ago

As the other commenters mention, the answer is likely no, unless new tech like the OP becomes practical

The best thing I have found is to play thunderstorm sounds with earphones. Thunderstorm sounds are inoffensive (unless you happen to be afraid of them) and intrusive noises are camouflaged within the variability of the storm noises. It is thus capable of deflecting your attention from louder sounds than white noise (which basically needs to be a lot louder than the intrusive sound)

Terretta2• 2 years ago

Try the Ozlo sleep buds, from folks who didn't want Bose sleep buds to disappear:

https://ozlosleep.com/

Consider the sound Crimson Cloak for city masking. These are not cancelling, they are masking, but reasonably effective as well as portable.

As for the rest of your piece, if you don't want to spend too much, look to recording studio sound baffling and absorption for your room's sound reflective surfaces, or theater drapery for your windows and if you need more a canopy bed or hospital bed curtain tracks to enclose you in damping.

If you are willing to spend more, NYC and similarly dense cities (1 in 50 Americans live in NYC) have specialty home builders that can make music rooms, piano practice rooms, neighbor noise blocking rooms, etc., using box within a box construction techniques to separate your space from the spaces around you with sound dampening. (Think like vacuum bottle, but for acoustic waves instead of cold/heat.)

Here are many approaches between these paths:

https://www.soundproofwise.com/soundproof-walls/

ChuckMcM2• 2 years ago

This is a pretty interesting paper. I was not aware of the acoustic properties of silk (a fabric that continues to surprise me). The ability to actively dampen noise emission would obviously be of interest to ninja assassins but as someone who has hearing challenges I think exploiting its properties to make it into a full garment microphone might be an interesting application. Based on the sound levels in the paper I don't think it would work as a speaker however which is kind of good because everyone having their own mood music all the time would be super distracting.

dsr_• 2 years ago

I don't think it would work as a speaker

https://www.parts-express.com/search?keywords=silk%20tweeter...

begs to disagree with you. (72 results, mostly for sale right now)

ChuckMcM2• 2 years ago

Technicalities! But its a good point. I was thinking unsupported fabric as would be found in clothing vs something strapped into a frame. A vague neuron in mine brain has faint memories of 'silk tweeters' in the Rogers Sound Labs studio monitors I used to have, alas 'big' three way speakers are much less common now.

hinkley4• 2 years ago

Bah. I thought this was going to be cool passive noise reduction but it’s active.

Back in the 90’s someone figured out these little hollow beads that ate sound. They talked about how we could paint them on walls to dampen whole rooms, or things like airplanes.

Since we never heard from them again, even after the patents would have expired, I suspect that they couldn’t find a binder that adhered to the beads without filling in the holes. Or the paint neutralizes the effect.

sgt101• 2 years ago

Why wouldn't you just quilt them up in lots of pockets and then attach them like wall paper?

axoltl• 2 years ago

Two modes are described, one is direct acoustic interference. That one's an active mode where sound waves are cancelled out and the fabric effectively is "just" a speaker. The second is a passive method where the sound is dampened by way of sinking the current produced by the piezo fiber.

djusk• 2 years ago

Unfortunately the passive method is not very effective at blocking sound, 75% is only about 5 dB.

shakna• 2 years ago

Those sound similar to maybe SiLibeads? Which are widely deployed into factories but doesn't real turn up in more daily spaces.

patel011393• 2 years ago

This is a repost of an earlier HN post from months ago...

mensetmanusman• 2 years ago

Since it’s in the zeitgeist, the piezofiber used is a pfas. It uses similar pfas materials that all lithium ion batteries utilize for safety.

We will have to wrap our heads around which pfas technology is worth it.

unit149• 2 years ago

Finally, the fabric achieves a 75% decrease in sound as its vibrations are suppressed up to 95%, and it is controlled to modulate acoustic reflectivity.

If an LLM really did write this, I doubt it would be able to distinguish between the faculties of Active noise cancellation and direct sound suppression.

Within the IoT, SPL has potential blockchain applicability, even in an absence of its incorporation in various fabrics. `

Noise-canceling single-layer woven silk and cotton fabric

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