The sound of steel

Automotive Design & Production, August, 2006

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Caption: THE SOUND OF STEEL. While this might appear that those guys are working with something that might be associated with NASA, they're actually working on something that is no less sophisticated, in some regards, though it may seem to be: they're analyzing the sound from a model of a Chrysler Group Stow 'n Go minivan seat tub. They're inside the Sound Transmission Loss Suite in the recently opened Noise and Vibration Application Research Center, a 65,000-f[t.sup.2] facility opened in Canton, MI, by Materials Sciences Corp. (MSC; www.quietsteel.com; Elk Grove Village, IL), the producer of laminated steel products; Bruel & Kjaer North America (www.bkhome.com; Norcross, GA), a producer of sound and vibration measurement products; and Link Engineering (www.linkeng.com; Plymouth, MI), a designer and builder of NVH test systems. What appears to be something out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind is actually a cluster of microphones and instruments. Below the floor of the hemianechoic room there is a reverberation chamber; sound is generated through the seat tub, then measured by the instruments.