Acoustic Sensors

Description:
Sensors can be designed that make use of acoustic signatures for troubleshooting in industrial settings.

Broad Fields of Use:
Various industries and production plants need sensors and detectors that can alert plant personnel to problems without unnecessary cost of time and money. Sensors can avoid the need for mechanical, invasive breakdown of equipment for visual inspection to check on problems. These sensors and detectors can alert plant operators to problems by monitoring plant processes and reporting the information electronically.

Comparison with Current Technologies:
Work in the development of acoustic analysis has been conducted for a number of applications, but, to date, has not been directed at specific applications to the sound signatures of individual processes in industry and plants, such as those that can be related to a particular process in a plant. Because of distinctive sound signatures for a number of activities in industrial settings, the approach should prove to be adaptable to many industrial and plant environments.

Description of Current Application:
The applications for this type of sensor have involved feasibility studies to determine the possible use of remote sound recording, frequency analysis, electroacoustics, and portable deployment of electronic equipment to determine the degree of ability to detect sound differences as a function of an individual process, a piece of equipment, or some type of operating equipment. Sensors of this type include several experimental variables, including distance from the sound, determination of the ability to filter background noise, and determination of the effects of any additional sounds related to the process of choice. In feasibility studies, acoustic approaches have been designed, for example, with respect to monitoring the sounds emitted by both the device by itself and in conjunction with its long range surroundings as a complete system. Another approach is to use sonic analyses scenarios of a device or system under different operating conditions and analyze those noises using acoustic analyses. The use of noise changes and noise level thresholds can be studied as an acoustic screening technique.

Contact and Brief Bio:

Dale L. Perry, Senior Scientist
Phone: (510) 486-4819
E-mail:

MS 70A1150
Sensors Group
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Berkeley, CA 94720