Reduction of the occlusion effect induced by earplugs using quasi perfect broadband absorption.

ABSTRACT: Passive earplugs are used to prevent workers from noise-induced hearing loss. However, earplugs often induce an acoustic discomfort known as the occlusion effect. This phenomenon corresponds to an increased auditory perception of the bone-conducted part of physiological noises at low-frequency and is associated with the augmentation of the acoustic pressure in the occluded earcanal. In this work, we report a new concept of passive earplugs for mitigating the occlusion effect between 100 Hz and 1 kHz. The strategy consists in reducing the input impedance of the earplug seen from the earcanal by using quasi-perfect broadband absorbers derived from the field of meta-materials. The proposed "meta-earplug" is made of 4 critically coupled Helmholtz resonators arranged in parallel. Their geometry

SUBMITTER: Carillo K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9468357 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature