|
|
College
Student Teams Identify and Reduce Noise Emissions on Power
Tools
What are the Student Engineering Teams?
The Division of Applied Research and Technology of the National
Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) sponsored
student engineering teams and tasked them to identify noise
emission sources on various power tools and to make recommendations
to reduce those emissions. NIOSH provided the students new table
saws, nail guns, circular saws, pneumatic impact wrenches, and
jigsaws and asked them to identify noise sources and develop
new noise controls or apply existing controls to reduce overall
noise emissions. These contract partnerships between NIOSH and
Michigan Tech University, Penn State University, Iowa State
University, Purdue University and the University of Cincinnati
resulted in a number of presentations detailing the students
engineering noise control efforts during the winter semesters
of 2002 and 2003. Their results demonstrate the feasibility
of reducing noise levels of these tools within a reasonable
time frame and cost. The students designed noise reduction
solutions of 3-20 dBA sound power level for their particular
tool of study. Some of the noise reduction recommendations
and noise control evaluation results from this partnership
were presented at the Acoustical Society of America’s
meeting in Pittsburgh, PA in June, 2002 and the Institute
for Noise Control Engineers (INCE) conferences in Dearborn,
MI in August, 2002 and Cleveland, OH in June, 2003. One of
the NIOSH sponsored projects, “Study of Noise from a
Pneumatic Nail Gun” by Dan Hicks, et al, won a “Best
Student Paper” award at the INCE meeting in Cleveland
this year.
What are the benefits of this partnership?
The benefits of the NIOSH-University partnerships were:
- Provided NIOSH necessary access to expertise, facilities,
and equipment to accomplish a broad scope of work in a short
time frame.
- Created a positive image and provided NIOSH exposure on
campus ... particularly within the engineering community,
which typically has limited exposure to occupational safety
and health issues and organizations.
- Provided “outside the box” application and
discovery opportunities for solving real noise problems.
- Promoted future collaborations between NIOSH and academia.
- Enhanced both the students learning experience and the
NIOSH capability in the engineering control of noise.
|
College Student Solutions on Power Tool Noise Emissions