Active Control of Sound

The active control of sound waves has become an extraordinarily large and vigorous area of academic research and technological development. In this paper we describe the physical principles underlying the control of sound and review their application in a wide range of contexts. One scenario involves the control of noise from a primary source by the introduction of secondary sources, and this technique is described for fields in ducts, in free space, in enclosures (with particular reference to aircraft cabins), and for turbomachinery. A second scenario involves the use of the active control of sound to eliminate large-scale oscillations in more complicated flows, in which part of an unstable feedback cycle is mediated via acoustic waves. Successful applications of this idea include the control of combustion instabilities and compressor surge.