NOISE IN SHIPS' ENGINE ROOMS AND OTHER MACHINERY SPACES

To provide some general guidance for reduction of noise to the lowest practicable limit for the protection of personnel and the efficient tending of machinery and equipment, the Chamber of Shipping of the United Kingdom retained the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research to examine the overall position regarding noise in ships engine rooms and other machinery spaces. The paper examines criteria for shipboard spaces adopted by authoritative bodies of maritime nations, reviews relevant hearing damage risk and speech interference criteria, presents data on measured noise levels and deduces that while there is a wealth of information on measured noise levels from main propulsion machinery at service speed, both on test beds and in shipboard installations, information on factors such as the significance of incidental noise associated with operational procedures and noise from auxiliary machines is noticeably lacking. The paper also considers means available for prevention of hearing damage on existing ships, examining various possibilities on practical and economic grounds with regard to basic types of propulsion units installed in ships of relatively recent construction and covering reduction of reverberant noise, noise reduction at source, use of control rooms and the development of hearing conservations programmes. For the future consideration is given to the means by which existing equipment can be used to best advantage by careful selection at the ship design stage, and the implications of producing machinery which is less noisy are examined.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • 45 Conference Papers presented at IMAS 73, London, 4-8 June 1973, organized by the Institute of Marine Engineers. This paper is available only in a set of 7 papers in Subject Group 4: "Marine Pollution: Sewage, Oil, and Noise" at $10.00.
• Corporate Authors:

  Institute of Marine Engineers

  Memorial Building, 76 Mark Lane
  London EC3R 7JN,   England 
• Authors:
  • McNaught, J
  • Middleton, A J
• Publication Date: 1973

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Engines; Human factors engineering; Machinery; Noise; Noise control; Ships
• Uncontrolled Terms: Noise reduction
• Old TRIS Terms: Engine noise; Machinery noise; Shipboard noise
• Subject Areas: Environment; Marine Transportation; Safety and Human Factors; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00048469
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Institute of Marine Engineers
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Nov 14 1973 12:00AM