In a time where noise is coming at us from all directions, you have moments where you need to shut it all down. Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor, Bogdan-loan Popa, and his research team Yuxin Zhai and Hyung-Suk Kwon, have taken this long-standing problem and began to look deeper on how noise isolation could be improved. A key motivator for investigating this issue is the effects environmental noise can have on a person’s health. In their newly published research in Nature Communications, the team references an article from the European Heart Journal where a group found that auditory annoyances not only disturbed sleep and impaired cognitive performance but ultimately caused an increased incidence of arterial hypertension and even stroke. With this catalyst, Popa and his team expand on their recent studies showing how bianisotropic (Willis) media have improved results in sound isolation over traditional ways of sound absorption and redistribution. Technologies incorporating acoustic bianisotropy have the potential to be a revolutionary factor in the noise control industry.
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