Noise-canceling 'soundproof curtains' now available
A research team led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has announced that they have developed a fabric that can create a quiet space using a piece of fabric as thin as a hair, by applying technology that turns fabric into a speaker.
Single Layer Silk and Cotton Woven Fabrics for Acoustic Emission and Active Sound Suppression - Yang - Advanced Materials - Wiley Online Library
This sound-suppressing silk can create quiet | EurekAlert!
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1043849
The MIT-developed 'soundproof silk' creates a quiet space and suppresses noise in two ways. The first is the noise-canceling function, which reacts to sound and generates sound waves to cancel out the noise.
The technology to give fabric noise-canceling capabilities is an application of the technology used to make fabric into microphones. In previous research, piezoelectric fibers that emit electrical signals when subjected to vibrations were sewn into the fabric to create a fabric microphone.
On the other hand, the soundproof silk produced sound by passing an electrical signal through piezoelectric fibers. The research team even managed to attach the soundproof silk to a circular frame, which could be used as a speaker to play Bach's music.
This fabric emits sound waves with the opposite phase to the noise, cancelling out the sound; this makes noise-canceling soundproof silk a reality.
'We could use fabric to make sound, but the world we live in is already full of noise, so we thought it would be more valuable to create silence rather than produce sound,' said MIT's Grace Yang.
However, this noise cancellation only works in small areas, such as the space between the headphones and your ears, and does not work in large spaces, such as a large room.
So the research team wove a second feature into the soundproof silk: It controls the vibration of the fibers and forces the fabric to remain still, preventing sound from passing through the fabric.
For example, if your neighbors in an apartment are making noise in the middle of the night, the sound will carry into the next apartment because the noise causes the walls to vibrate, generating sound in your room.
When the research team held the fabric still, they found that the soundproof silk acted like a mirror, reflecting sound and preventing it from being transmitted through the fabric to the listener. This soundproofing effect also works in large spaces such as rooms.
In fact, when we tested the 'direct suppression mode' (bottom left in the figure below) with its noise canceling function, we found that it could reduce sounds up to 65 decibels, the same volume as a person talking loudly. In addition, the 'vibration suppression mode' (bottom right), which suppresses the vibration of the fabric, was able to reduce sound transmission by up to 75%.
In the future, the research team plans to study fabrics that can block multiple frequencies and further improve performance by changing the number of piezoelectric fibers, sewing method, and applied voltage.
'There are a lot of things that can be tweaked to make this soundproofing fabric really effective,' Yang said. 'This research is just beginning.'
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