Introduction

A vast amount of applied technology relating to noise and vibration control has emerged over the last twenty years or so. It would be an impossible task to attempt to cover all this material in a text book aimed at providing the reader with a fundamental basis for noise and vibration analysis, let alone in a single chapter! This chapter is therefore only concerned with some of the more important fundamental considerations required for a systematic approach to engineering noise and vibration control, the main emphasis being the industrial environment. The reader is referred to Harris4.1 for a detailed engineering-handbook-type coverage of existing noise control procedures, and to Harris and Crede4.2 for a detailed engineering-handbook-type coverage of existing shock and vibration control procedures. Beranek4.3 also covers a wide range of practical noise and vibration control procedures. Some of the more recent advances relating to specific areas of noise and vibration control are obviously not available in the handbook-type literature, and one has to refer to specialist research journals. A list of major international journals that publish research and development articles in noise and vibration control is presented in Appendix 1.

This chapter commences with a discussion on noise and vibration measurement units. The emphasis is on the fundamental principles involved with the selection of objective and subjective sound measurement scales, vibration measurement scales, frequency analysis bandwidths, and the addition and subtraction of decibels.