Pan-American News (Sept 2018)

By S. A. Hambric

Canada

The 176th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) will be held jointly with the 2018 Acoustics Week in Canada meeting of the Canadian Acoustical Association in Victoria, BC, in November 2018. Also in Canada, the 26th International Congress on Sound and Vibration (ICSV26), the annual congress of the International Institute of Acoustics and Vibration (IIAV), will be held in Montreal in July 2019, with the support of the Canadian Acoustical Association.

Two new local chapters of the Canadian Acoustical Associate are being created: one in Toronto, Ontario, which has already held its first meeting, and another one forming in Montreal, Quebec. See more information at caa-aca.ca.

Chile

In April 2017 SOCHA (the Chilean Society of Acoustics; see www.socha.cl), cooperated with the Ministry of Environment of Chile to organize the xvi seminario de ruido ambiental del ministerio del medio ambiente (Seminar on Acoustic Pollution and Environmental Noise Control). More information on this meeting is available here.

USA

In August 2018, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Noise Control and Acoustics Division (NCAD) participated in the INTER-NOISE conference in Chicago, Illinois. In November, it will also be participating in the International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by organizing the technical track for Acoustics, Vibration, and Phononics. There will be a total of 13 technical topics along with a congress‐wide symposium on NDE (nondestructive) and SHM (structural health monitoring) topics.

At INTER-NOISE 2018, NCAD continued its tradition of honoring a distinguished researcher in the area of noise control and acoustics with the prestigious Rayleigh Lecture, given by Prof. Roger Ohayon, CNAM Structural Mechanics and Coupled Systems Laboratory, France, on computational vibroacoustics in low‐ and medium-frequency bands. In addition, an NCAD tutorial was held to provide an in‐depth examination of a topic of interest to NCAD members. This year’s tutorial was given by NCAD group leadership team member Dr. Zheng of Kansas University on the topic of time‐domain simulation of multiphysics sound propagation in complex media and environment.

Malcolm Crocker, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering, has been awarded the 2017 Per Bruel Gold Medal for Noise Control and Acoustics from ASME. Crocker was selected to receive the medal “for promoting international collaboration, education and the dissemination of knowledge in noise control and acoustics through the formation of professional organizations, the establishment of journals and congress series and the creation of reference volumes for practitioners.”