With most people living in high-rise apartment buildings in Korea,... inter-floor noise causes many disputes between neighbors.<br />But there's a new technology that may help reduce the annoyance.<br />Kim Min-ji has more. <br />A noisy upstairs neighbor can cause a lot of stress, especially at night.<br />The footsteps or other sounds that can be heard between floors are transmitted via low frequency vibrations.<br />Materials aimed at reducing the noise have been developed... and some apartment buildings have even tried filling the space between floors -- but neither method has been very effective.<br />Now, researchers in Korea have developed a new technology that could take care of the problem.<br />They have devised a new acoustic absorption structure with springs... that reduces between-floor noise by absorbing low-frequency vibrations.<br /><br />"The theory here is that the device controls the vibrations and acts as a spring."<br /><br />The device can reduce the transmission of noise between floors by up to 30 percent,... and the installation cost is also 20 percent less than existing soundproofing methods.<br />The researchers hope the device can be used not only to soundproof floors,... but also in a wider range of fields.<br /><br />"The technology can be adapted to manufacture landing gear for planes or wind-powered electrical generators -- basically anything that needs to counter big or fast vibrations.<br /><br />The findings have been published in the March issue of the journal Transactions on Mechatronics.<br />Kim Min-ji, Arirang News.
