Sound applications in Engineering

Last semester, I presented during the colloquium of the School of Engineering and Sciences of USFQ. The topic of my talk was applications of sound in engineering.

Even though there are multiple uses of sound in engineering, most engineering schools do not offer acoustic engineering as a career. In this presentation, I show the vast variety of applications of sound. We start with the architectural acoustics, discussing how different buildings with different uses require a different treatment of sound. I showed a fascinating TEDx talk about how to design rooms that have unique acoustic features. Then, I made the jump to the applications of sound in civil engineering, as an example of how better asphalt mixes can be used for noise reduction. Finally, I brought the topic to my field, bridge engineering. Here, we see different non-destructive testing methods that use sound waves (or other types of waves) to look inside the material of a bridge. We talked about acoustic emission measurements, a way of listening to what happens inside a bridge when it is loaded. Finally, I discussed how we use these type of measurements during load testing of bridges, and showed the example of the collapse test of the Ruytenschildt Bridge.

You can find the slides of this presentation here: