College Students Engineer A Leaf Blower Silencer That Blew Black And Decker Away

Grab your NVGs, tactical-insert lawnmower, and newly suppressed leaf blower because 'Yardwork 6' is going dark. A team of undergraduate engineering students at Johns Hopkins University has created a quieter leaf blower using a simple barrel attachment that acts like a suppressor on a gun. This attachment is expected to hit shelves in the next two years, reducing the traditional shrill cry of leaf blowers worldwide to a gentler blowing noise.

Last September, a team of four students from Johns Hopkins were presented with a challenge: "Take a leaf blower, but make it quiet." The project began with figuring out how the leaf blower was built and its individual components, further "analyzing all of its the noises and why it made them." Once complete, the team spent a lot of time contemplating improvements, creating solutions, and binning many options that did not fit the bill. Team member Andrew Palacio explained to JHU Hub that "The sound that comes out of this leaf blower is very complicated and it contains a lot of different frequencies," so ultimately, it took around 40 versions of the solution that was finally landed upon, a suppressor-like leaf blower-attachment.


The final design cuts out the high-pitched, more annoying frequencies by roughly 12dB which is 94% quieter over the original sound pressure level, and the overall noise was reduced by 2dB making the leaf blower around 37% quieter. So, while it is a quieter machine overall, the noise that is present will also be more bearable than standard, non-suppressed leaf blowers. This design rightfully "wowed Stanley Black & Decker officials, who can't wait to start manufacturing and selling the new tools." "This is ready to be mass manufactured," said Stanley Black and Decker Senior Product Manager Nate Greene, and "is a really rare and dramatic level of success."

If you want to see this new technology in action, check out the video above. We are not sure if they have a name for it yet, but we are fond of Blower Baffle and are looking forwarding to seeing the product name on store shelves soon.

Hero Image Credit: WILL KIRK / JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY