An effective noise diagnosis scheme for industrial plants

This diagnosis is part of a comprehensive noise abatement program designed to provide an understanding of the overall noise problem in a plant before any controls are implemented subsequently. Field measurements are performed in order to generate the plant noise matrix defining the noise level at different working locations independently of the production rate prevailing on the day of the tests. Rank ordering of machine noise sources, noise reduction priorities, and magnitudes required in the plant are established based on the workers exposure indexes criteria. This scheme provides the required information to proceed in defining an optimum noise control protection plane, from an economical and technical standpoint in order to comply with the regulations. An actual application in a sawmill plant is discussed in this paper.