Welcome to the Proceedings of Acoustics 2021 Making Waves. This volume contains papers presented at the 2021 Annual Conference of the Australian Acoustical Society held in Wollongong, NSW in February 2022.
On behalf of the organising and scientific committees, it is my great pleasure to welcome you to experience ‘Science at the Beach’ in the form of Acoustics 2021, the annual conference of the Australian Acoustical Society. As you would be well aware, it has been a difficult time to host an event of any shape or form for the past 2 years. Following the cancellation of our national conference for 2020, this event was originally proposed as a gap filler after our joint meeting with the Acoustical Society of America was postponed until 2023. It was hard to believe then, that even this current national event would also suffer a 3 month postponement, but it did! However, taking inspiration from the Tokyo Olympics, we kept the 2021 logo and pressed ahead into 2022, otherwise we would not have an acoustics conference on Australian soil between 2019 and 2023.
At this point, I would like to thank all of you that have made the effort to attend in person, particularly those who have travelled from interstate.
Our acoustical society is truly unique in that it brings together, academia, industry, consultants, government, defence and equipment manufacturers. When this occurs, good things can happen, particularly when we meet in person rather than virtually. We have all these ingredients at this conference, so I hope all of you will reflect on this and look for ways in which we can further collaborate to improve our understanding, utilisation and management of noise and vibration.
This year brings us to the Novotel North Beach on the beautiful NSW South Coast where we will enjoy an excellent technical program including five keynote lectures and around 70 presentations. In recognition of the current role that rail infrastructure developments are having in most States, there will be a dedicated session on rail related noise and vibration challenges. The program will also include sessions on underwater acoustics, building acoustics, aeroacoustics and structure-borne noise to bring us up to speed on developments in those areas over the last 2 years.
Acoustics 2021 would not have been possible without the dedicated work of the organising committee and especially the technical proceedings editors, Nicole Kessissoglou and Marc Buret, who have put in an extraordinary effort in compiling such high quality proceedings. As we all know, a conference has two main requirements, papers and money. To this extent, I also extend my gratitude to those of you who have gone the extra yard by preparing conference papers, and to Norm Broner and Julie Sobolewski who have worked with the sponsors and exhibitors to underpin the success of Acoustics 2021 and ensure recognition goes to those who support us. A big thanks also goes to Julie as the conference secretary who has had the responsibility of making sure it all runs smoothly, as well as those have agreed to chair sessions.
I hope that you will enjoy the technical and social program that we have planned for Acoustics 2021, Making Waves and your stay in Wollongong.
Yours in acoustics,
Jeff Parnell
Conference Chair
Acoustics 2021 Making Waves