Executive Summary : | The need for residential comfort is growing rapidly due to global warming. The main factors that affect the comfort of humans are 1) Noise pollution and 2) Improper ventilation. Developing countries like India can't always rely on electrically operated energy dependent climate control solutions. Generally, people will close the windows to avoid noise pollution and they can't enjoy natural evening breeze available in coastal regions like Chennai. Excess use of air-conditioning directly contributes to greenhouse effect and global warming. In fact, in Hong Kong and China, the governments have begun to realize that the energy consumption model is becoming unsustainable and a number of initiatives are being started to have open ventilation spaces in new houses/commercial buildings. But the major challenge is the exterior noise transmitted into the buildings causing discomfort to its residents. In order to minimize the above said effects, it is essential to develop a specialized ventilation system that can be attached to windows which minimises noise pollution without compromising the ventilation and the use of natural light. such an idea is largely unexplored due to following reasons: 1) Less design freedom in conventional design and analysis tools 2) Constraints in manufacturing of noise absorbers with conventional manufacturing methods. 3) Huge costs involved and size limitations with even advanced additive manufacturing methods Although in recent years researchers in singapore and Us have tried to work on this domain, they could handle only one particular frequency of noise. Hence, the challenge is to have a compact design which can reduce noise across a broad range of low frequencies (150 to 500 Hz) where most of the current solutions do not work satisfactorily. The emerging science of meta-materials is exploited for enhanced noise absorption and extensive simulations will be carried out to understand the physics of such a design and optimize the resonator meta-material for desired performance. |