Experimental evaluation of the sound power level (SWL) in a gearmotor by means of vibration measurements.

The purpose of the reported work is the estimation of the sound power level (SWL) emitted by machines in operational conditions with noisy environments through vibration measurements. As a first attempt, the estimation of the SWL has been calculated considering the radiation factor of the gearmotor’s surfaces equal to one, with reference to standard ISO 7849 - 2 [1]. For a more accurate estimate, the radiation factor was computed through a numerical simulation of the studied object (vibro-acoustic finite element model). The main outcome of this study is the development of a consistent vibrational testing procedure to characterize the SWL emitted by a gearmotor in real operational conditions. Results demonstrate that the vibration-based method ensures an accurate evaluation of the SWL and might overcome the operative issues related to pure acoustic-based methods.