Tech: Aerospace engineering student wins prestigious Beranek medal for noise control

For the second consecutive year, a graduate student at The University of Texas at Arlington has won a prestigious national award for noise control engineering.

Chia-Ching Lin, an aerospace engineering doctoral student, has earned the Leo Beranek Student Medal for Excellence in the Study of Noise Control from the Institute of Noise Control Engineering of the USA for his research in hypoid gear noise and vibration control in automotive rear axle systems. The institute awards the medal annually to outstanding undergraduate and graduate students at North American colleges and universities that have courses for noise control engineering.

“It’s encouraging to be awarded this medal and have my work recognized right before my dissertation defense,” said Lin, who is defending his research in mid-July. “I’m very appreciative of my advisor, Dr. Teik Lim, for his guidance. I hope to continue my research in this area in a full-time position in the automotive industry, and this award is an advantage as I begin my career.”

Lin’s doctoral work in the Vibro-Acoustics and Sound Quality Research Laboratory focused on gear noise and vibration control. Specifically, he is creating a rear-axle system modeling methodology that considers hypoid gear design parameters and vibro-acoustic analysis. Hypoid gears are widely used to transmit torque from the drive train axis to the wheel axle with an offset inside the rear differential in all-wheel-drive and rear-wheel-drive vehicles.
“I’m very proud of Chia-Ching for earning this prestigious award,” said Lim, interim president of UTA and Lin’s doctoral adviser. “This is a testament to his determination and dedication to his dissertation research. As he prepares to graduate this summer, I know that we will continue to see him succeed as he moves forward in his career.”

The Vibro-Acoustics and Sound Quality Research Laboratory performs integrated computational, experimental and analytical approaches to powertrain/structure noise and vibration, vibro-acoustics, active noise, vibration control and sound quality design. Lim, who is the lab director, and his team work with companies such as Daimler, Ford, General Motors, John Deere, Toyota and many others.

This is the second straight year that a UTA student has won the Leo Beranek Medal. Ashish Dev Kotian, a recent master’s graduate in mechanical engineering, was honored in 2019 for his work designing, fabricating and testing a muffler for the University’s Formula SAE team.

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