Sixty Years of Acoustic Design!

This year is the 60^th anniversary of the First World War which began on July 28, 1914. No doubt that leading up to this historic date, our daily lives will be full of constant reminders of this horrific war in which more than nine million combatants were killed. However throughout all the suffering, some positives did emerge – new friendships were made, new loves flourished and the science of acoustics was developed.

World War one was a mixture of old and new fighting techniques. On one hand horses were still widely used and trench warfare was still to the fore. On the other, aircraft became an ever more important tool providing each side with the ability to attack the enemy in its home land.

New equipment had to be developed to warn of the danger of approaching aircraft and this is where the science of acoustics began to play an important role with the development of Acoustic Location Equipment as a means to supplement visual warning of an air attack. Here you can see an early example of detecting the low frequency sound waves emitted from the aircraft engines.

Primasonics International have developed this science of acoustics to a new and exciting level with their range of Acoustic Cleaners which are employed to debond particulate and aid material flow wherever ash, powders or granules are generated, manufactured or stored. Find out more about this practical and highly efficient method of industrial plant cleaning at – www.primasonics.com

Time Out For Acoustic Cleaning Tekkies

In our last acoustic cleaners blog post we featured photographs from a Prima Whip™ training session for cement silo cleaning on a customer's site in Egypt.

Today we share with you a video clip filmed by our training personnel showing the Prima Whip™ working after installation onto a large cement silo. You see nothing on the surface because the action is all taking place below out of sight!

Here are Alex and Jamie, still in Primasonics workwear, taking in the sights and atmosphere of the fabulous Pyramids Of Giza.

For more information on our Prima Whip™ click here

Acoustic Locators - A Different Kind Of Acoustic Technology

Being involved with acoustic cleaning, I am always interested to read any material relating to acoustic technology. The truth is that acoustics can be used for all manner of things.

Just the other day in fact I came across the term acoustic location - essentially the science of using sound to pinpoint the direction of something travelling and its distance. Primarily used for military purposes as one might imagine, acoustic location can be conducted in different environmental situations - in the atmosphere, in water and also in solids - and it can be done in two different ways:

Active acoustic location

The principle involved is to use a signal generator and a listening device. Sound is generated to produce an echo and this echo is analyzed and the object's location detected.

Passive acoustic location
The principle is simply to detect the sound or vibration created by a specific object.

Passive acoustic location was used as early as the First World War in fact and continued to be used into the early part of the Second World War in order to detect aircraft engine noise. However, it became outmoded with the invention of radar. I was fascinated to read how, during both World Wars, acoustic location was used in various countries and in different ways.

In Britain acoustic mirrors were placed at strategic points around the coast during WW1 in order to detect any potential aerial attack.

(Photo) In Sweden they used acoustic location as anti-aircraft defence during the early part of WW2. Photograph taken in 1940 copyright Carl Gunnar Rosborn

In Japan, acoustic locators were used in WW2 - they opted for large metal tuba-shaped devices, subsequently referred to as war horns. See Wikipedia's page

Fascinating though it is to read all of this, I still prefer a more 'peaceful' application of acoustics. Give me silo cleaning any day!