Hairdryer is one of the devices that is used in everyday life. It is useful and efficient for drying hair in a short time, but most of the people pay less attention to the noise levels of this device. Majority of the hairdryers are capable of producing significantly loud noise which might cause health problems. There are several patents with new ideas about how to reduce the sounds produced by hairdryer parts. Although, these ideas suggested by patentees are promising, hair dryer noise still lacks academic investigation and needs to be thoroughly studied before applying any noise reduction methods. Hairdryers can be considered as a quite complicated noise source since there are several parts of the hairdryer that operate simultaneously and they are usually loud noise sources. Namely, they are fan noise, jet noise, and noises created by heating element, front and rear grilles, and air filters. Also, hairdryer configuration is similar to an aircraft engine and studying hair dryer noise sources might be useful to analyse noise sources of more complicated structures such as aircraft engine in the future. Thus, this paper presents experimental investigation and noise source ranking of the hairdryer noise. The experimental measurements are carried out in a semi-anechoic chamber and it is shown that how the noise producing parts of the hairdryer contribute to overall sound pressure level of the hairdryer. Then, noise reduction methods can be applied to reduce unwanted noise. Measurements can thus be made inexpensively using available software and cheaper facilities.
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