Noise abatement in wood-machines? Must first be able to detect and rank the sources!

Work related deafness is one of the most frequent pathologies in France. Machinery noise in work places is the principle source of the risk for deafness. In this paper, dealing with wood conditioning machines, we show that noise control procedures must first aim at localizing and ranking the machines’ individual noise sources. Acoustic imaging is one of the most practical and efficient approaches in this domain. We have made this choice through sound intensity and acoustic holography techniques. The paper describes the application of these techniques to several machines and illustrates some typical results of these applications.