A revolutionary silk fabric developed by researchers at MIT and other institutions manages to suppress noise and create sound insulation in interior spaces.
The fabric, which is barely thicker than a human hair, contains a special fiber that vibrates when voltage is applied to it. The researchers took advantage of these vibrations to suppress sound in two different ways.
In one, the vibrating fabric generates sound waves that interfere with unwanted noise to cancel it out, similar to noise-cancelling headphones, which work well in a small space like ears, but not in large enclosures like rooms or airplanes.
In the other, more surprising technique, the fabric is held still to suppress vibrations that are key to sound transmission. This prevents noise from transmitting through the fabric and further silences the volume. This second approach allows noise reduction in much larger spaces, such as rooms or cars.
Using common materials such as silk, canvas, and muslin, the researchers created noise-suppressing fabrics that would be practical to implement in real-world spaces. For example, such a fabric could be used to make dividers in open work spaces or thin fabric walls that prevent the passage of sound.
“It is much easier to create noise than silence. In fact, to avoid noise we dedicate a lot of space to thick walls. The new work provides a new mechanism to create quiet spaces with a thin sheet of fabric,” says Yoel Fink, in a statement. professor of the departments of Materials Science and Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering, principal investigator of the Electronics Research Laboratory, and lead author of a paper on fabric.
An open access article about the research recently appeared in Advanced Materials.
