Saturday, May 7, 2011

A Legend Passes...

Hello again. Sorry for the long time between posts. We'll try to do better.

We would like to mark the passing of a giant in our industry. Warren E. Blazier Jr. - often described as "the Acoustical Consultants' Consultant - passed away in February 2011 at the age of 87. While he may not be a household name to many in the general public, in the fields of acoustics, noise and vibration control, and probably speech and hearing and sound, Warren Blazier was a household name. He was an ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-Conditioning Engineers) Fellow and Life Member. He served on several standards and technical committees, including SPC 171P, Method of Testing Seismic Restraint Devices for HVAC&R Equipment, TC 2.7, Seismic and Wind Restraint Design, and 2.6, Sound and Vibration Control, on which he served for more than 25 years, contributing to seven successive editions of the ASHRAE Handbook on that topic. He received a Distinguished 50-Year ASHRAE Member Award in 2008 and four awards related to best paper presentation at ASHRAE conferences. He was also a prolific author of numerous book chapters on HVAC systems noise and vibration control as well as a variety of research and application papers for refereed industry publications.

Probably Blazier's single greatest accomplishment though was in the creation of RC (Room Criteria) Curves which rate indoor ambient noise levels produced by HVAC systems according to level and frequency across the human hearing range. Traditionally, Leo Beranek's NC (Noise Criteria) Curves had been (and still are in many circles) the standard for indoor noise criteria rating systems. But RC curves have garnered a significant following in the acoustical consulting industry over the years and today remain the primary system of noise rating recommended by ASHRAE.

I personally never met Blazier, but knew him professionally through his writings and technical work, and that is the way the great ones get remembered longest. Warren Blazier was one of the great ones.

* The head scratcher entry of this post delves into the animal world. From MSN.com, an English cat has a record-setting purr, according to Guinness World Records. Smokey, a gray and white tabby, reportedly purrs at 67.7 decibels, which is about as loud as conversational human speech, or two to three times louder than a usual cat purr.

Some folks have a lot of time on their hands.