SUMMARY

The purposed research seeks to create a hydraulic noise control solution, through use of a syntactic foam, which remains effective for system pressures up to 35 MPa. In order to create such a noise control solution, the current generation of syntactic foams will need to be altered to remain compliant at such elevated system pressures. Prior work has shown that employing syntactic foam, specifically a voided urethane, within traditional noise control devices, such as in-line suppressors, Helmholtz resonators and tuning coils, improves their performance at low system pressures, from 0 to 6.9 MPa. However, the current generation of voided urethane loses its compliance at system pressures above 6.9 MPa. Because noise control is a function of compliance, the loss of compliance also leads to a reduction in noise control effectiveness. The proposed research seeks to create a voided urethane which retains its compliance at system pressures up to 35 MPa and to create a suitable model to predict its material properties. Experiments will be conducted in order to validate the model as well as measure the transmission loss across devices employing the developed syntactic foam. Development of the voided urethane is necessary because noise within a hydraulic application causes several problems, and an effective treatment technique would greatly reduce the severity of these problems. The current state of the art of hydraulic noise treatment techniques is lacking a compact noise control solution that treat noises effectively for all system pressures used in hydraulic applications; a voided urethane that remains compliant to system pressures up to 35 MPa will provide the solution.