Assessment of Noise Exposure of Sawmill Workers in Southwest,Nigeria

Economic wood processing employs the use of industrial machines for cutting, shaping, milling, and sawing timber, thereby leading to the generation of high levels of noise. Published data from empirical studies have categorized noise as an environmental hazard of global significance. Furthermore, noise exposure limits for different industries and all the industrial machines available has not been formally established as it presently exists in developed nations around the world. Therefore, this study assessed the daily exposure of sawmills workers to noise in Southwestern Nigeria. Reconnaissance surveys were first carried out in Osun, Oyo, Ondo, Ekiti, Lagos, and Ogun States to select sawmills that were fully operational and fit for the study. Two fully functional sawmills in two cities of each State were eventually selected for data collection, making a total of 24 sawmills, while the Circular Machines (CM), Planer Machines (PM), and Band-saw Machines (BM) were the machines in each sawmill considered. Two machines each of CM, PM, and BM were considered in each sawmill, making a total of forty-eight (48) machines each of CM, PM, and BM. Sound data were collected between 7 am and 7 pm each day for six days (between Monday and Saturday) using Extech 407732 sound level meter and all stabilized measurements were taken three times at different intervals. The data collected were in three different periods: Machine No-work Period (NP_m), Machine Idle Period (IP_m), and Machine Working Period (WP_m). A two–way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was carried out at P < 0.05 to determine whether there is a significant difference in the sound level average before and after the break, for both the idle and working periods of the three machines considered. This was also done to determine whether there is a significant difference between the sound level average of the results collected during idle and working periods of the three machines. Noise Pollution Levels (L_np) ranged from 83.20 dB (PM) to 107.65 (BM) and 93.42 (CM and PM) – 116.00 (BM) respectively, while IP_m also gave the least noise pollution level of 95.79 dB and WP_m gave the highest level of 102.88 dB. The results revealed that all the machines’ L_np values in the working period are more than the 90 dB acceptable limit the recommendation value of 90 dB while 89.6% of CMs, 75% of PMs, and 89.6% of BM had their L_np above 90 dB in the idle period respectively. The minimum and the maximum noise dose levels for IP_m, WP_m and overall are 0.09 (BM) and 2.37 (CM), 0.50 (CM), and 4.77 (PM) and 0.69 (BM) and 6.64 (PM) respectively. The study found out that the fundamental contributing factors to the high noise levels in sawmills are poor machine maintenance, use of old and obsolete machines, poor housekeeping strategy, limited space, workers’ negligence, lack of PPE, and lack of occupational safety training. The study recommends that proper workplace practices such as use of personal protective equipment, new and modern machines, training, and occupational safety programmes be implemented in the considered sawmills.     

单面柱局域共振声子晶体低频带隙特性分析及结构改进研究

基于有限元法对单面柱局域共振声子晶体进行带隙特性分析,研究了结构参数对该类型声子晶体的影响。结果表明:随着散射体高度的增加,单面柱声子晶体的第一完全带隙的起始频率逐渐降低,带宽逐渐增大;随着基板厚度的增大,单面柱声子晶体的起始频率逐渐升高,截止频率先增大后减小。并且在经典单面柱声子晶体的基础上,组合了两种新型的三组元单面柱声子晶体结构:嵌入式单面柱声子晶体(以下简称结构Ⅰ)和粘接式单面柱声子晶体(以下简称结构Ⅱ)。通过对其带隙特性的分析得出:这两种新结构与经典的单面柱声子晶体相比,都具有更低频的带隙,这对于低频减振降噪是非常有利的。本文的结果将对实际的工程应用提供一定的理论指导。     

Optimization of Transducer Location for Novel Non-Intrusive Methodologies of Diagnosis in Diesel Engines

The health monitoring has been studied to ensure integrity of design of engine structure by detection, quantification, and prediction of damages. Early detection of faults may allow the downtime of maintenance to be rescheduled, thus preventing sudden shutdown of machines. In cylinder pressure developed, vibrations and noise emissions data provide a rich source of information about condition of engines. Monitoring of vibrations and noise emissions are novel non-intrusive methodologies for which positioning of various transducers are important issue. The presented work shows applicability of these diagnosis methodologies adopted in case of diesel engines. The effects of changing various fuel injection parameters was analyzed. Scope of using non-intrusive technique has been analyzed by changing locations of microphone. Novelty of this worklies in exploring signal processing methods for various locations around the engine test set up. Various frequency ranges of contributing noise and vibration sources were identified. Time-Frequency analysis showed the onset of various cyclic. Based on the identification of various frequency bands, it is possible to device suitable filters in order to extract more information.     

Hyperparameter on-line learning of stochastic resonance based threshold networks

Aiming at training the feed-forward threshold neural network consisting of nondifferentiable activation functions, the approach of noise injection forms a stochastic resonance based threshold network that can be optimized by various gradient-based optimizers. The introduction of injected noise extends the noise level into the parameter space of the designed threshold network, but leads to a highly non-convex optimization landscape of the loss function. Thus, the hyperparameter on-line learning procedure with respective to network weights and noise levels becomes of challenge. It is shown that the Adam optimizer, as an adaptive variant of stochastic gradient descent, manifests its superior learning ability in training the stochastic resonance based threshold network effectively. Experimental results demonstrate the significant improvement of performance of the designed threshold network trained by the Adam optimizer for function approximation and image classification.     

Reducing Occupational Noise Propagated from Centrifugal Fan through Dissipative Silencers: A Field Study

Acoustic performance of dissipative silencer was evaluated to determine the effectiveness of perforated duct porosity and absorbent material density in reducing occupational noise exposure propagated from centrifugal fan. Design charts were applied to predict noise reduction and length of a dissipative silencer. Dissipative silencers with various punched duct porosity (14%, 30% and 40%) and sound absorbent density (80 Kg/m³, 120 Kg/m³, and 140 Kg/m³) were designed and fabricated. According to ISO9612 and ISO11820, noise level was measured before and after installing all nine test silencers at fixed workstations around the discharge side of a centrifugal fan in a manufacturing plant. On average, the noise level at the discharge side of a fan without silencer was measured to be 93.6 dBA, whereas it was significantly mitigated by 67.4 dBA to 70.1 dBA after installing all silencers. Dynamic insertion loss for a dissipative silencer with 100 cm length was predicted to be 27.9 dB, which was in agreement with experimental ones. Although, there was no significant differences between insertion loss of silencers, the one with 30% porosity and 120 Kg/m³ rock wool density had the highest insertion loss of 26.2 dBA. Dissipative silencers noticeably reduced centrifugal fan noise exposures. Increasing sound absorbent density and duct porosity up to a certain limit could probably be effective in noise reduction of dissipative silencers.     

Vacuum-gap-based lumped element Josephson parametric amplifier

We propose a lumped element Josephson parametric amplifier with vacuum-gap-based capacitor.The capacitor is made of quasi-floating aluminum pad and on-chip ground.We take a fabrication process compatible with air-bridge technology,which makes our design adaptable for future on-chip integrated quantum computing system.Further engineering the input impedance,we obtain a gain above 20 dB over 162-MHz bandwidth,along with a quasi quantum-limit noise performance.This work should facilitate the development of quantum information processing and integrated superconducting circuit design.     

一种基于序贯估计的直达声区水面舰船 被动测距方法 *

该文利用基于射线的盲解卷积方法，从直达声区的水面舰船噪声中提取出船和锚系于海底的垂直接收阵之间的时域信道响应，并利用直达波在不同阵元相对于参考阵元的到达时间差，通过序贯方法，利用射线模型和声速剖面信息，对水面舰船距接收阵的距离进行了估计。通过处理海深约为580 m的2016年美国圣巴巴拉海峡的实验数据，对1.6~3.5 km直达声区范围内Anna Maersk商船与垂直阵之间的距离进行了估计，验证了测距方法的有效性，并将结果与系统测量值和几何方法的估计值进行了比较。由于该方法不需要对海底参数进行估计，所以在海底参数未知时要优于传统匹配场方法；在声速剖面存在跃层且海底为多层分布的复杂信道条件下，该方法仍能对距离进行有效估计，且与测量值的相对误差在6%以内，小于几何方法的估计误差，测距结果精度较高。     

水下对转螺旋桨流致辐射噪声机理与预报方法*

水下对转螺旋桨流致辐射噪声的预报对于水下目标的特征提取和分类识别具有重要意义。由桨叶的旋转引起的湍流场是水下对转螺旋桨流致辐射噪声的源场。分述了水下对转螺旋桨湍流边界层脉动、旋转干涉效应和空化效应引发的水动力噪声机制和研究进展,比较了目前工程应用中的3种对转螺旋桨流致辐射噪声预报方法的特点。在分析对转螺旋桨流致辐射噪声数值预报难点的基础上,综述了对转螺旋桨流致辐射噪声计算方法的研究进展,指出间接数值模拟方法是工程中进行对转螺旋桨流致辐射噪声预报的有效方法。     

More efficient time integration for Fourier pseudospectral DNS of incompressible turbulence

Time integration of Fourier pseudospectral DNS is usually performed using the classical fourth-order accurate Runge-Kutta method or other second- or third-order methods, with a fixed step size. We investigate the use of higher-order Runge-Kutta pairs and automatic step size control based on local error estimation. We find that the fifth-order accurate Runge-Kutta pair of Bogacki and Shampine gives much greater accuracy at a significantly reduced computational cost. Specifically, we demonstrate speedups of 2× to 10× for the same accuracy. Numerical tests (including the Taylor-Green vortex, Rayleigh-Taylor instability, and homogeneous isotropic turbulence) confirm the reliability and efficiency of the method. We also show that adaptive time stepping provides a significant computational advantage for some problems (like the development of a Rayleigh-Taylor instability) without compromising accuracy.