The CAMM centre, a joint research centre between DTU Electrical Engineering and DTU Mechanical Engineering, has offered a 3 year PhD fellowship to Peter Risby Andersen. The objective of CAMM is to increase the fundamental understanding of the factors that control the behaviour of acoustical and mechanical micro systems. The Development and application of numerical tools is a relevant line of work towards this objective, together with optimization, micro-manufacturing and materials science.
"CAMM gives me the opportunity to continue improving my understanding of acoustical phenomena’s at the microscale. "
Peter Risby Andersen
Peters Project: Numerical & Experimental Study of the Acoustical-Mechanical Interaction at the Micro Scale including Losses, aims at investigating small, highly coupled acoustical-mechanical devices containing details in the millimeter to micrometer scale, by the use of state-of-the-art numerical techniques that include losses. The project will involve:
- Study of existing literature regarding the behavior of acoustic and mechanical waves with losses in the micro-scale and the coupling of mechanical and acoustic domains.
- Systematic testing and development of numerical simulation and analysis tools that can model the behavior of the aforementioned small coupled devices with losses. This will include numerical methods based on the Finite Element Method (FEM), the Boundary Element Method (BEM) and a combination of them.
- Measurement of both simplified test setups and partial assemblies in order to verify and support numerical results.
- Optimization of acoustical-mechanical systems in order to achieve specific performance objectives in terms of acoustical and mechanical transmission, or absorption of sound waves. Both topology and shape optimization methods will be utilized.
Peter, who comes from a small village on Fyn, has a Masters degree in Acoustics and signal processing from the University of Southern Denmark. His main area of academic interest is numerical acoustics and numerical methods in general and it is especially the field of acoustics treating losses that he finds interesting and challenging. Besides the application of numerical methods in acoustcis, he has a wide-ranging interest in the phenomena of general acoustics, ranging from non-linear effects to room acoustics.
The origin of his interest in this particular field comes from a lifelong interest in playing the guitar. Playing mainly the classical guitar means strong demands on the acoustics of the given room. Peters interest in numerical methods were fuelled by an early lecture at the University of Southern Denmark, treating the usage of the simulation software COMSOL. and he became fascinated by the possibility to solve and get a detailed understanding of very complex physical systems.
The main motivation for Peters further research in this area is the fact that the area of acoustics including losses is very challenging and important to understand when optimizing small acoustic devices. CAMM, he says therefore gives him the opportunity to continue improving his understanding of acoustical phenomena at the microscale. Peter goes on to explain more about his research; "Acoustic losses is mainly important when the dimensions are small. The general trend is to fabricate smaller and smaller devices. This means that the understanding of acoustic losses has become important, for example mobile phones and hearing aids contains small acoustic devices. My research will mainly treat numerical modelling of acoustic-mechanical devices including viscose and thermal losses, but will also include experimental verification. There exist different numerical models that can include acoustic losses, often these models are very computational heavy. The objective is to improve the understanding of acoustic losses in small devices and contribute to the improvement of the current models".
DTU Electrical Engineering and CAMM welcome Peter.