Ventilation systems acoustics is a major area of activity for ITS for various reasons, having regard to their components, which, by their nature, create or allow the undesirable propagation of noise (sometimes: generated by them):
- fans: centrifugal or helical (including: circulators and blowers), they are of course major sources of noise
- elbows, changes of section such as bifurcations, reductions or enlargements (a fortiori if sudden), dampers, grids, filters and any other element likely to cause a total pressure loss (including straight lengths of ducts): on the one hand they attenuate - to some extent - the noise of the stage which they constitute (depending on their dimensions, and not equally at all frequencies) but on the other hand they create aerodynamic noise i.e. noise linked to speed the passage of the fluid that air is (also known as self-noise or regenerated noise)
Ventilation systems acoustics therefore have to do with noise emissions:
- of air inlets or outlets through orifices or openings e.g. in walls, or on the roof of a building, but also at the level of the suction or discharge of Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning (HVAC) hardware: heat pumps, air condensers , coolers or machinery intended for natural or artificial circulation of air
- of fans casings and, in general, of the walls of all the other components and hardware mentioned above
Depending on the context, such noise emissions must be limited with respect to issues related to noise at work, environmental protection or acoustic comfort in buildings, imposing (depending on the context) allowed maximum sound levels: action is required in case of excess.
Ventilation systems acoustics therefore also have to do with noise reduction devices, which must be inserted in line (therefore: crossed by the air flow) or else transverse, to reinforce walls of ducts, pipes, but also: of casings for hardware as mentioned above, for machines involved in air treatment (humidifiers, dryers, filtration devices) and for the fans themselves..
With regard to the ventilation systems acoustics, ITS offers various products and services:
- engineering and software edition: simulation of acoustic performance (and this is not incidental: simulation of aeraulic performance) of components (considered separately or combined), either with in-house software or with commercial software (CFD, FEM, BEM). In this respect, the definition and the sizing of silencers (with rectangular or circular cross section, dissipative i.e. with an absorbent lining or with resonators) occupies a place of choice, output data being the insertion loss (in dynamic regime), the flow noise and the total pressure loss
- marketing (by the means of representation mandates) of solutions to reduce the noise impact: silencers and sound attenuators of all kinds, lagging for ducts (with or without installation) with guaranteed performance.
Ventilation systems acoustics products and services: a unique collection is what you can find at ITS.