Active noise control for a washing machine

An actively controlled thin barrier may provide better noise reduction results than common passive solutions. The performance of such active method has been confirmed by the authors using a dedicated noise-cancelling laboratory casing. Now, such approach is developed and applied to a real device casing, what is a significant step toward commercialisation of the active casing method. An adaptive FXLMS algorithm with practical modifications is proposed for the active control of the casing to provide noise reduction. A feed-forward structure is used, with a reference microphone located inside the real device. Additionally, an Internal Model Control system with reference signal estimation is also implemented for a comparison. The performance of the resulting control systems is experimentally verified for a real washing machine (an off-the-shelf product), using a loudspeaker placed inside the washing machine to provide reproducible noise. Obtained results are reported and discussed.