Preposition usage, "for" vs "in", in the context of a "For the purpose of * in/of *"

Question

I'm preparing the title of my PhD dissertation and have lost confidence in the use of my prepositions.

The title is "A Study on the Near-Surface Flow and Acoustic Emissions of Trailing Edge Serrations"
The subtitle is "for the purpose of noise reduction in wind turbine blades".

Suddenly that last "in" feels like it could be "of" (despite feeling it would lose some nicety in how it sounds).

What do you think is grammatically correct though?

If the sentence were written "for the purpose of reducing noise in wind turbine blades," there would be no question of substituting "of," unless you put "the" in front of "noise." Grammatically, you could probably use "of" in the original sentence, but then you'd have four "of's." — Zan700, Commented Jul 3, 2017 at 18:55

user242899 · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-03 21:11:38Z

1

One of the functions of the preposition of is to identify abstract nouns by their sound source.

Ex. I heard the bark of a dog. bark= noun source=dog

In your sentence the noun =noise (modified as reduced noise) and the source is the turbine.

I hope that helps.

answered Jul 3, 2017 at 21:11

user242899

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