Vibrating Windows to Stop Outside Sounds

I live in a crowder area, and I hear cars, people, all day long. Somethimes all this noise can be quite disturbing, but a team of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability LBF in Darmstadt, Germany, have developed a vibrating window that negates noise generated by sources as loud and shrieking as jet planes.

A window acts like a loudspeaker and a membrane. If you control the vibration of the window, you can control transmitted noise in such a way that it is not acting like a membrane or a loudspeaker,” said Thilo Bein, head of the business unit for energy, environment and health at the institute.

Traditionally, to obstruct intrusion of noise through windows, engineers thicken the glass to double or even triple panes. But there is disadvantage to it; the process drives up the cost of construction.

Now, Bein and his team have developed a method that thwarts vibration with vibration, effectively negating the interference of outside noise through glass windows. The trick, they say, is to stop the sound waves in their tracks. – Source – Discovery