October 16, 2004
SilenceAir: Noise Blocking Bricks
SilenceAir looks like a transparent brick, and uses “passive resonators” to allow fresh air into buildings while leaving 85% of the noise behind.
“Cities are noisy. When we block the noise from our offices and homes, we usually reduce the ventilation…the result is sick buildings and people,” says the inventor Chris Field.
Chris developed the concept during his doctoral research at the University of Sydney, Australia.
The arrays of resonators inside the bricks are tuned to block sounds in the range of 500Hz to 2kHz. (Humans have an audible range of 20Hz to 20,000Hz.)
“The lengths of the tubes (resonators) can be adjusted, however, to suit the source of noise to be attenuated,” says Chris.
“For example, for installations near busy roads, the resonator lengths can be tuned to target traffic noise frequencies specific to the site.”
