The article describes mine survey works during opening old St. Anthony of Padua water adit in Horní Město (Czech Republic) to make it accessible to visitors. The works cover the connecting survey and orientation measurement, traverse measurement of the first opened part, setting-out projection of the end of opened part to the surface to make shaft from the surface, new connecting survey and orientation measurement by shaft and traverse measurement of the rest of water adit. Non-standard aids and techniques were used during surveying. One of the tools is a suspended prism holder developed at Institute of geodesy and mine surveying, VSB – Technical university of Ostrava, registered as a utility patent.

The main problem in the measurement of airborne sound insulation is the measurement of the sound power radiated by the barrier, in practice performed by measuring the sound pressure level and the acoustic absorption in the receiving room. Large variations of the sound pressure level in a reverberation room indicate the presence of dominating strong standing waves, so that it becomes necessary to install diffusing elements. In ISO 10140, the limits have been defined in which the reverberation time at frequencies at and above 100 Hz should be included. Sometimes, however, in the case of rooms with a large volume, obtaining the required parameters is difficult and sometimes even impossible. It should then be checked whether the measured sound insulation depends on the reverberation time.

The paper presents the results of sound insulation measurements at various reverberation time lengths in subsequent stages of diffusing elements installation in the receiving room. An analysis of diffusing materials amount and arrangement influence on the uniformity of the sound pressure level distribution and reverberation time in the room as well as the value of the measured sound insulation was carried out. Uncertainty of sound insulation measurement with partial uncertainties was adopted as a criterion supporting the assessment of the obtained results.

A plenum window with incorporation of Helmholtz resonators in between two glass panes was tested in a reverberation room. The effects of jagged flap on reducing strength of diffracted sound was also investigated in the present studies where white, traffic and construction noises were examined during each set of experiment. When the noise source was located at the central line of the plenum window, the plenum window with Helmholtz resonators was able to mitigate 8.5 dBA, 8.9 dBA and 8.2 dBA of white, traffic and construction noises, respectively, compared with the case of without window. These amounts of noises that attenuated by the plenum window were slightly higher than the case where noise source was diverged 30º away from the plenum window. The effects of jagged flaps on the acoustical performance of the plenum window were negligible. The Helmholtz resonators had the best performance in the frequency region between 900 Hz to 1300 Hz where in this frequency range, the plenum window with Helmholtz resonators was able to attenuate additional 1.7 dBA, 1.9 dBA and 1.6 dBA of white, traffic and construction noises, respectively, compared with the case of without resonators.

To investigate the impact of various Al-Ti-B grain-refiners on solidification and grain-refining performance, a wrought aluminium alloy AA6182 was used. Three different grain-refiners from different manufacturers were used to establish the efficiency, i.e. contact time before casting, on the primary solidification and grain formation size. The primary solidification of α-Al grains at inoculation was observed by using thermal analysis (TA). Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was used in order to analyze the quality of various grain-refiners. The size of the primary grains was analyzed using optical microscopy (OM). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to estimate the size and distribution of Al3Ti and TiB2 particles in various grain-refiners and to establish the best efficiency of the investigated grain-refiners.

Within 1-4 min of inoculation the smallest fine equiaxed grains were achieved when either one of the investigated grain-refiners was added. It was established, that grain-refiner A contains higher content of impurities which do not melt in the experimental temperature range made by DSC method. The most pure grain-refiner turned out to be grain-refiner B, in which the most optimal number of TiB2 particles and particle size distribution was found.