Noise control of dipole source by using micro-perforated panel housing

Abstract Mitigating low-frequency noise in a small ducted fan system such as hairdryer is still a technical challenge. Traditional duct lining with porous materials work ineffectively due to the limitation of its thickness and length of small domestic product with ducted fans. This study presents a passive approach to directly suppress the sound radiation from the fan housed by a short microperforated panel covered with a shallow cavity backing. The noise suppression is achieved by the sound cancellation between sound fields from a fan of a dipole nature and sound radiation from a vibrating panel via vibro-acoustic coupling and by sound absorption in micro-perforations to widen the stopband. A two-dimensional theoretical model, capable of dealing with strong coupling among the vibrating micro-perforated panel, sound radiation from the dipole source, sound fields inside the cavity and the duct is developed. Through modal analysis, it is found that the even modes of the panel vibration are very important to cancel the sound radiation from the dipole source. Experimental validation is conducted with a loudspeaker to simulate the dipole source, and good agreement between the predicted and measured insertion loss (IL) is achieved.