History of the Vibration and Acoustics Group

Research activities in noise and vibration at UNSW became established with the appointments of Kerry Byrne and Eric Hahn in the early 1970s. Both Kerry and Eric are now Emeritus Professors at UNSW.

Kerry Byrne's main activities were in industrial noise control and were motivated by extensive consulting activities in the power generating industry. Several significant inventions arose from this work, including dissipative silencers for heat exchangers and very large reactive silencers.

Eric Hahn's research activities were in rotor dynamics, journal bearing hydrodynamics and squeeze film dampers in gas turbine engines. He spent a number of sabbatical periods at Rolls-Royce, Derby, UK, helping them to develop these dampers, and his former PhD student, Dr Ningsheng Feng, whose thesis was on that topic, continues to work in these areas. In early years they concentrated on developing rotor models, and in more recent years the emphasis has been on improving the identification of other factors such as the rotor support and foundation, and rotor configuration (including identification of misalignment). Much of this work was also supported by the power generating industry.

Robin Ford (now retired) joined the group in 1977 and worked mainly with vibration problems in rail vehicles and track.

Bob Randall (now Emeritus Professor) joined the group in 1988, having worked for the previous 17 years with the Danish company Bruel & Kjaer (B&K), world leading manufacturers of noise and vibration measuring and analysis equipment. His research interests include machine diagnostics using vibration analysis, blind determination of structural dynamic properties from measurements of response signals only, and operational modal analysis (OMA).

Nicole Kessissoglou joined the group in 2003 and established a research area in prediction and control of noise radiation from submarines, with support from the Marine Platforms Division of DSTO. Other research interests include optimisation of mufflers for improved acoustic performance and active vibration control.