MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION INSTRUCTIONS

Shaw-Ching Sheen
Department of Occupational Safety and Hygiene, Tajen University, Taiwan 907 e-mail: scsheen@seed.net.tw

This work investigated the effectiveness of air-shrouding nozzles on reducing noise levels at audible frequencies. Shrouding air will decrease the velocity gradient formed between the highspeed jet and the ambient air. Thus, this approach is effective for reducing the levels of noise generated near the nozzle exit, which falls mostly in the ultrasound frequency range for a small-exit nozzle because the peak frequency of jet noise is inversely proportional to the exit diameter. Its effect on the levels of lower-frequency noise, which are more closely associated with hearing damage, is still unclear. We used a nozzle with an exit diameter of 2.8 mm and measured the noise levels with or without shrouding air, which is exhausted from a circular slot of 0.3 mm thickness and 8 mm diameter. The exit velocity for the main exit is supersonic. The frequency band analysis of the generated noise showed that the shrouding air did reduce noise levels near the peak frequency, which is approximately 50 kHz. However, the noise levels at audible frequencies are affected very little if the additional momentum due the shrouding air is considered.

Introduction
Air-shrouding nozzles are one of the suggested control methods for jet noise generated by industrial air nozzles. 1, 2 In air-shrouding nozzles, a lower-velocity layer of exhausted air is located between the major jet and the ambient, thus reducing the velocity gradient between the high-velocity jet and the ambient air. Because this velocity gradient supplies the energy to the eddies in the mixing region that are the major source of jet noise, the shrouding layer is expected to reduce sound power emitted from the mixing region. Although air-shrouding nozzles are a common noise-control approach in literature, its successful application to small-exit diameter nozzles of the order of a few millimeters is rarely reported. According to the general knowledge about the noise-generating mechanisms of jet noise, the effectiveness of using air-shrouding nozzles to reduce hear-damage risk for the operator of air-guns may need further clarification. According to the theory of gas dynamics, most nozzles powered by industrial air compressors should operate at exit velocities exceeding sound speed, which can be attained at an upstream gauge pressure of as low as 0.89 atmospheric pressures in a frictionless and adiabatic process, while the maximum pressures generated by air compressors typically exceed 5 atm. Because of the high exit velocity and the small exit diameter for hand-held air guns, the peak frequency of the sound spectrum,
ICSV19, Vilnius, Lithuania, July 8-12, 2012

19th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, Vilnius, Lithuania, July 8-12, 2012 which is proportional to the exit velocity and inversely proportional to the exit diameter, 2 nerally exists in the ultrasound range.

Figure 1. An Air-shrouding nozzle.1

Therefore, the portion of noise generated by small-diameter jets that are most damaging to human hearing exists at frequencies that are much lower than the peak one. The corresponding sound sources for these relatively low frequency noise are therefore located downstream of those that generate the majority of sound power. Because the effect of the shrouding air as a buffer zone is expected to become less significant as the jet stream flows downstream, its effectiveness on reducing noise levels at audible frequencies is not quiet clear. The purpose of this work is to study the frequency range over which the air-shrouding nozzles are effective for jet flows exhausted from small exits of diameters of the order of a few millimeters. .

Methods
In this work, we used a nozzle with 2.8-mm exit diameter. The shrouding air is exhausted from a circular slot slightly upstream. The slot has a diameter of 8 mm. The opening is approximately 0.3 mm, as shown by Figure 2. The flow rates for the 2.8-mm exit and the slot are independently controlled by two pressure regulators. The flow rate for the 2.8-mm exit is fixed at 160 standard liter per minute, which is typical of applications using nozzles with similar exit diameters. Varying flow rates for the shrouding flows were used to find out the optimum one.

19th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, Vilnius, Lithuania, July 8-12, 2012
Figure 2. The tested nozzle.

The sound measurements were made with one -in free-field microphone that has a upper frequency limit of 100 kHz with deviations no more than 2 dB. The output signals sampled at 500 kHz/s and fast Fourier transform was performed. The microphone was placed 30 cm from the nozzle exit at the same height as the nozzle. The microphone axis is perpendicular to that the nozzle. Because the microphone is a free field one, it was pointed at the nozzle exit..

Results and Discussions

The obtained FFT results showed that the peak frequency without shrouding flows fell between 40 and 50 kHz. This, of course, is in the ultrasound range. The effect of shrouding air is found to be most significant at approximately 45 SL/min. The spectra at the flow rate of 160 SL/min with and without shrouding air is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Sound spectra generated by the tested nozzle with and without shrouding air

It can be clearly seen that the shrouding flows are more effective for frequencies near and above the peak one. Noise at this frequency range is generated near the nozzle exit, where the effect of the shrouding flows on the flow field is expected to be more significant. At the low frequency end, we note that the noise generated with shrouding flows is higher than the one without the shrouding flows. The reason should be the increased momentum due to the shrouding air. Noise at this frequency range should be located more downstream, where the mean flow profile, whose velocity gradient supplies energy to the small eddies that the source of mixing noise, is determined more by the total momentum flux than by the flow configuration of the nozzle 3

19th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, Vilnius, Lithuania, July 8-12, 2012 exit. It should be noted that, far away from the nozzle exit where the nozzle can be seen as a point, the flow field will be determined solely by the momentum flux of the jet stream [sch]. Figure 3 shows that, for a small-diameter jet, the noise-reducing effect of a air-shrouding nozzle is most significant in the ultrasound region. This effect will be become less prominent with decreasing frequencies. With the slot design for our nozzle, the effect at audible frequencies is very small. The effectiveness of air-shrouding nozzles near the peak frequency as demonstrated in the above test is anticipated and should be applicable to other designs using shrouding flows. However, the almost non-existent noise-reducing effect at the audible frequencies for our nozzle may not be as commonly applicable. The design modification of the shrouding flows, such as the slot thickness or the location of the slot may hold the possibility of extending the noise-reducing effect to lower frequencies. This will require more extensive studies.

Conclusions
In this work, preliminary tests showed that shrouding-air nozzles are effective in reducing the total emitted sound power. Its effect is most significant for sound power near the peak frequency. This noise-reducing effect in general deterioates with decreasing frequencies. Therefore, for small-diameter jets, for which the generated noise has a peak frequency in the ultrasound region, the effect of shrouding air must extend to frequencies much lower than the peak one before this approach can be an effective approach for reducing the risk of hearing damage to operators of the nozzles. The Heading 1 style has been adjusted to follow these rules.

REFERENCES
Lord, H.W., Gatley, W.S., and Evensen, H.A., Noise Control for Engineers, Robert Krieger Publishing Company, 315-316, (1980). Bies, D.A., and Hansen, C.H., Engineering Noise Control: Theory and Practice, 3rd ed. London: Spon Press, 532533, (2003) Migdalovici, M., Sireteanu, T. and Videa, E. M. Control of Vibration of Transmission Lines, International Journal of Acoustics and Vibration, 15 (2), 6571, (2010). Kadailis, P., Girinien, R., Rimeika, R. and iplys, D. Application of leaky surface acoustic waves for investigation of thin film properties, Proceedings of the 18th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, 2010, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1014 July, (2011). Finks, K. (2003). Geometrical Acoustics. [Online.] available:http://www.fink.com/Kevin.html Yang, J. N., Akbarpour, A., and Ghaemmaghami, P. Technical Report NCEER-87-0007, Instantaneous Optimal Control Law for Tall Buildings Under Seismic Excitations, (1987). Poese, M. E., Performance Measurements on a Thermoacoustic Refrigerator Driven at High Amplitudes, Master of Science Thesis, Graduate Program in acoustics, Pensylvania State University, (1998). Baumann, H. D. and Coney, W. B. (2006), Noise of gas flows, in The Noise and Vibration Control Engineering: Principle and Applications 2nd ed., L.L. Beranek and I.L. Ver (eds.), John Wiley & Sons. Fisher, M.J., P.A. Lush, and M. Harper Bourne (1973), Jet noise, J. Sound Vib. 28(3):563585.

19th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, Vilnius, Lithuania, July 8-12, 2012 Huff, D. and Envia, E. (2007), Jet Engine Noise Generation, Prediction, and Control, in Handbook of Noise and Vibration Control by M. Crocker, John Wiley & Sons.

Saad, M. A. (1993): Compressible Fluid Flow., Prentice Hall.