Dr.-Ing. Anton Melnikov

A stage elevator is a part of a theater or opera stage floor that can be walked on. It can be used for decorations buildup or scenically elevated during a play. The scenic movement is a crucial point from the view of machinery acoustics. The acoustical requirements coming from the actors rise. Stage elevators cover with mostly rectangular surface almost the whole stage floor and provide a great radiating surface for noise. Also the surrounding fixed floor can be noisy. For the reasons of high loads a decoupling of the drive as the noise source is not possible with usual methods. More detailed considerations are necessary to obtain a solution. This enables the industrial application of numerical acoustics and structural dynamics. As the first step in that project some already build stage elevators will be modeled and characterized by measurements. The models will be validated. With the gained experience better or new noise reduced concepts can be investigated and optimized. The noise-optimized stage elevator provides new change of scene capabilities for the actors and opens a new door for the stage machinery development.