Delphi, a manufacturer of sensors make use of MEMs technology, have made a headphone system that incorporates 6-axis accelerometers. The headphone is now required to be worn by all Indy car drivers. The system records the acceleration of a driver’s head, and the data recorded by the system can be used to investigate a car crash.

Read the press release on the Delphi web site.

Sensor Magazine has an interesting article describing how MEMS accelerometers operate for high-G and gyroscopes.

Read more on the Sensor Mag web site.

General Motors’ vice-chairman of product development, Bob Lutz, was interviewed at the Detroit Motor show this week (January 2003) and said that fuel cell cars are so quiet that they are considering making artificial engine noise sounds and playing them through the car’s audio system.

Panasonic make a range on noise cancellation headphones and earphones. See the Panasonic web site for more details.

Emerson Process Management has a large collection of condition monitoring related application notes available online. Topics include bearing vibration analysis, data acquisition, balancing, oil analysis, thermography, and many more.

The FEMtools website has recently added a selection of acoustic and vibration papers that are available for download.

The Sound and Vibration magazine has a new web address: http://www.sandv.com/. Their feature articles are available for download in PDF format. This month they have an interesting article on “Airplane Ground Vibration Testing”, that discusses the modal anlysis of a 767 supported by the undercarriage on air-springs. In addition, they also have many older articles available for download – well worth checking out.

Cadillac, a division of GM, has designed cars with electro-rheological dampers – shock absorbers that contain iron particles that align themselves in the presence of a magnetic field. Their system is called ‘magnetic ride control’, and they claimed is the world’s fastest reacting suspension system.

Read more on the Cadillac web site.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has developed a range of vibration isolation product for isolation of buildings from earthquakes. Their products include tuned liquid mass dampers (sloshing), tuned mass damper for vertical vibration, and base isolation systems for buildings.

Read more on the MHI web site.

Bone loss is a serious problem for astronauts and they do rigourous daily exercise to reduce the hazard. The International Space Station is equipped with a treadmill that astronauts have to use for about an hour a day. When the TVIS (treadmill vibration with isolation system – there is an acronym for everything) is used, vibration is generated that transmits through the space station and can affect vibration sensitive equipment and experiments.

Read more on the NASA research web site.