Sound Suppressing Silk

Sound continually engages our auditory and mental faculties, but unwanted noise can have harmful health effects. The World Health Organization considers noise to be an important public health issue with direct impacts in hearing loss and psychological effects from long term exposure. We’ll explore sound suppression techniques in the U.S. National Science Foundation’s “Discovery Files”.
The pervasive issue of noise pollution is a potential source of harm, making sound control a challenge and an area of opportunity.
A collaboration including NSF-supported researchers at M.I.T. and the University of Wisconsin - Madison, have developed a sound-suppressing silk fabric that could be used to create quiet spaces.
The fabric contains a special fiber that vibrates when a voltage is applied to it and can be used in a couple ways. The vibrations were leveraged to suppress sound by generating sound waves that interfere with and cancel out unwanted noise. This technique would work well in headphones and earbuds.
In another technique, the fabric is held still to suppress the vibrations that are key to the transmission of sound, preventing noise from being transmitted through the fabric and quieting the volume beyond. This approach could be used in much larger spaces like rooms or cars.
By using common materials like silk, the noise-suppressing fabrics could be practically implemented in real-world spaces as dividers or thin fabric walls in open workspaces. Researchers measured the fabric reducing sound transmission by as much as 75%.
To hear more science and engineering news, including the researchers making it, subscribe to "NSF's Discovery Files" podcast.