In a printing workshop, a rotary press is a very powerful noise source potentially causing sound nuisance for the personnel operating in the vicinity (in production halls) and sometimes also for the neighborhood. It is often necessary to use in such cases a high-tech soundproofing equipment to ensure the conformity of the facility with respect to the legislation on noise in workplaces and sometimes also with respect to the regulations in terms of fight against domestic noise.
ITS will participate in the construction of an acoustic partition for a rotary press near Metz in the county of Meurthe et Moselle in the region Alsace-Champagne-Ardennes-Lorraine (France).
This soundproofing device will offer a sound reduction particularly important at medium and high frequency where the maximum of the noise emission of the enclosed noisy equipments is, requiring a specific design and a specific construction of the acoustic partitions walls.
The opaque section will be made using industrial metal soundproofing panels, being modular (they will allow a partial dismantling of the soundproofing device, not only in case of need related to maintenance, but also - they will then be reused with a different poisitioning - in connection with subsequent modifications to the layout of some machines or auxilairy equipment, or even with the relocation of the press: this has already been seen):
- on the side of the noise source - which the printing press is - a material (e.g. mineral wool with a high density, surfaced by a glass veil and protected by a perforated sheet) will have the main function of absorbing sound i.e. of ensuring that the sound waves are not reflected by the walls of the acoustic partition, otherwise the sound level - on either side of the partition - would be increased (all other things being equal as to the capacity of the wall to limit noise transmission)
- the other side of the panels, made of steel (the sheet will be unperforated on that side) will mainly contribute to the sound insulation (which is expressed in decibels) that will be obtained
Related features such as visibility for the operation of the machines, access for maintenance work, disassembly of some subsets of the industrial soundproofing ... will be integrated according to the needs for this acoustic partition for a rotary press.
In particular, the choice of layouts, and surfaces for the glazed parts will be a key point for the success of this project of construction of an acoustic partition for a printing press:
in terms of acoustic efficiency, not too much is needed since the glazing is devoid of - except at low frequencies, but this is not of great interest given the frequential distribution of the acoustic power associated with the operation of a printing press (medium and high frequencies are dominant) - sound absorption properties, with the unfavorable consequence mentioned above with regard to the opaque parts of the acoustic partition; reduction of sound transmission is not problematic if laminated glazing is used, which may have an acoustic attenuation index equivalent to that of metal panels
on a practical level, they are essential, in many places - and in the form of large subassemblies - for supervision - as required - of the operation of the machine, based on a visual check by the operators (the visibility, from ground level, and at a short distance from the acoustic partition, of mechanism located at high altitude, makes very high translucent elements necessary); acoustic partitions for printing presses are therefore always very largely glazed
Such a project of construction of an acoustic partition for a printing press (from which other functionalities can - in certain cases - be expected, e.g. containment conducive to the protection against dust, or to the installation of air-conditioning in a part of the premises) will be, for the human resource of ITS, the opportunity to benefit from the feedback from many achievements of this kind accumulated during the last decades.
In the field of protection against noise at work, similar applications are also possible in all industrial sectors, for what ITS and its commercial partners also have a huge experience, what allows the development of tailor made solutions for any project.