Owens Corning Automotive releases another acoustic insulation material

Owen Corning Automotive, a tier 1 supplier to the automotive industry, has released another product for providing acoustic insulation. The VersaMat product has been used successfully in dish washers, and washing machines. Plans are to use the material in headliners, door panels, under-the-hood applications, trunk storage systems and under carpet heat shields

Read more at the Owens Corning Automotive web site.

Lord Corp develops surface effect dampers

Lord Corporation has developed “surface effect dampers” that absorb energy as a function of displacement. Conventional dampers use oil and absorb energy as a function of velocity. The technology has been applied to engine and body mounts.

Read the story on the Lord Corporation web site.

FEMTools released for Linux

FEMtools, a finite element software package based on Matlab, has been released for the Linux operating system. Version 2.2 will be the first release for Red Hat Linux 7.3.

Read the story on the FEMtools web site.

Vacuum tube on PC motherboard

AOpen, a Taiwanese manufacturer of computer components, has released a motherboard for PC with a vacuum tube to “improve” the audio output. This product is obviously targeted for a niche market, for those people that find their conventional PC sound cards unsatisfactory

London’s wobbly Millenium Bridge fixed with vibration dampers

The Millenium Bridge over the Thames was opened on 10 June 2000, but was closed three days later after complaints of people feeling “sea sick”. The problem was caused by the people walking synchronously. When people walked across the lightweight bridge it vibrated at its resonance frequency and people subconsciously adjusted their walking pace so that it matched the resonance frequency of the bridge, as this causes the least resistance to a person walking. However when several hundred people are all exciting the bridge at the resonance frequency, it causes the bridge to sway. Engineers at ARUP tested the bridge and analysed the data. The remedy was to install dampers to reduce the vibration.

Read more about this story on the ARUP web site.

Read the article on the BBC web site.