8/13/2019 Importance of INTERIOR ACOUSTICS for Architect and Interior Designer

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Importance of INTERIOR ACOUSTICS for Architect and Interior Designer

Importance of INTERIOR
ACOUSTICS for Architect and
Interior Designer
Praveen Mishra Follow
Praveen Specification Consultant at Hilti … 35 1 4
Mishra

WHAT IS INTERIOR ACOUSTICS?

INTERIOR ACOUSTICS IS ABOUT THE
airborne sound inside rooms, i e how it propagates and interacts with the room’s surfaces
and objects. But it’s also about our perception of the room’s acoustic properties.

AT ROOM TEMPERATURE SOUND

PROPAGATES
with 344 m/s (1,250 km/h), which results in many reflections at walls or objects in a normal-
sized room before a sound wave is damped below the hearing threshold. Inside the room we
can only affect the sound wave at its reflections in walls or objects. Three things can happen
with the incoming sound energy:
Reflection. A Hard Surface, Such As Concrete, Glass Or Wood, Acts As A Mirror For The Sound
Wave And Thus Reflects It.

Absorption. A Sound Wave Can Propagate Into A Porous Material Where It Is Transformed
Into Heat By Viscous Friction.

Scattering. The Sound Wave Is Reflected In An Unordered, Almost Random, Way.

 
ALL OF THESE THREE PROCESSES
ARE IMPORTANT IN CREATING THE
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ACOUSTICS OF A ROOM. Sign in Join now

 Most practical objects includes all three, but to a varying degree. A completely flat glass
surface has very little absorption and scattering, its acoustic characteristics is dominated by
pure reflection. An upholstered sofa, on the other hand, is dominated by absorption and
scattering due to its softness and shape.

 
THE ACOUSTIC PROPERTIES OF A
ROOM SHOULD BE DESIGNED
 to support the activity in the room. Good room acoustics are seldom noticeable. Since there
are so many different activities that can take place in rooms there are no such thing as
universally good room acoustics. Each activity has its own challenges, and consequently its
own acoustic design. To help acousticians in design of room acoustics a number of measures
have been developed, and the most common ones are mentioned in the following.

THE MOST COMMON MEASURE IN

INTERIOR ACOUSTICS IS THE
REVERBERATION TIME.
The reverberation time can be said to be a measure of a room’s echo since it is the time that
it takes for a sound to decrease with 60 dB from its original sound level. The reverberation
time (T) can be calculated simply from the room’s volume (V) and absorption area (A)
through Sabine’s formula, T = 0.16 V/A

THE ABSORPTION AREA CAN BE

UNDERSTOOD AS THE AMOUNT OF
“PERFECT” SOUND ABSORBER...
inside the room and is commonly measured in m2S (square meters Sabine). A very important
assumption for Sabine’s formula is however that all the room’s surfaces must have equal
sound absorption, or that the room must have a diffuse sound field. A diffuse sound field can
be understood as a completely unordered or random sound field. A practical consequence is
thus that a room must have a large amount of scattering properties, or a large amount of
diffusion, to be suitable for use of Sabine’s formula.
Additionally there are many other acoustic measures that can be used when designing room
acoustics, e g STI (Speech Transmission Index), C50 or C80 (Clarity) and G (Room strength).
 
1. Importance of Acoustics
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Acoustics are fundamentally important to learning environments. Learning is intrinsically

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linked with communication, and aural (sound) communication is acoustics. Similarly, learning
is about concentration, and external noise is a major distracting factor in education. This
article is about typical classroom environments, up to about 1,000 square feet. Large
specialized rooms like auditoriums, gyms, and cafeterias needs careful acoustical engineering
and should not be designed using the rules of thumb described below.
The importance of acoustics is not limited to classrooms. Noise in corridors and public spaces
can soar if they are too reverberant (too much echo), with voices raised louder and louder to
overcome the background echo, just like shouting conversations at a noisy cocktail party or
restaurant. In addition, sound is an important navigational tool for people who are blind or
low vision, and either end of the reverberation scale (too "live" or reverberant, or too "dead"
or absorptive) can prevent them from finding their way.
2. Notable Failures
Most of us are familiar with the "schools without walls" of the 1960's. They were based on
assumptions about teaching and acoustics that in most cases were not valid. The school
without walls is based on the open office environment ["Dilbert" cubicles]. These are
moderately successful because of the major acoustical difference between individuals
working alone in the offices. However, in the school, groups of people are expected to
communicate nearly constantly in the same acoustical environment, which is quite a different
acoustical challenge. Solutions appropriate to creating privacy are often inappropriate in
learning environments. Beware especially of architects and vendors who think in terms of an
office environment while talking about classrooms. The "School Zone" part of the Armstrong
Ceilings web site is one example of this. That approach can result in adequate but not
excellent learning environments.
[picture of kid moving an accordian-type partition]
What's wrong with this picture? If a wall is light enough to be moved by a child, it is not
going to be an effective barrier for sound.
3. The Nature of Sound
Sound is created by vibrations of air or other materials. When someone speaks, their vocal
cords vibrate, which creates vibrations in the air that travel to the ears of the listeners much
as waves travel across a pond when you throw in a stone. When the sound is higher, the
waves are closer together (higher frequency sound) and when the sound is lower, the waves
are farther apart. Longer waves (lower sound) pass through thinner materials and curve more
easily around barriers. Shorter waves (higher sound) are reflected by relatively thin materials
and don't bend much around barriers. Nearly all spoken sound is in the range of 125 Hz
(cycles per second) to 4,000 Hz, although people can hear from about 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. All
sound waves carry well through open air, or even through small holes and cracks in walls and
ceilings. Because of the logarithmic nature of sound, a small hole will let through a lot of
sound.
"Noise" is just unwanted sound, and "signal" is what you are trying to hear. In every sonic
envirnment there is background noise, and if the signal isn't much louder than the noise, you
will have trouble hearing. In a large room with several groups of students all in conversation,
unless enough sound is absorbed instead of reflected off of walls and passed on to the next
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student, the overall effect is a lot of noise. Typical school cafeterias are built without much
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(expensive) sound absorbing material, so they are very noisy.
4. Absorption and Reflection of Sound
Sound waves can be reflected or absorbed, and the science of acoustics is largely about what
to reflect (send back into the room, what to transmit (sent to the next room), and what to
absorb (turn into heat energy). Environments for music want more reverberation, enough to
"warm" the sound with reflections. If too much is absorbed, less sound reaches the audience
and it sounds "dry" or "dead" , the musicians need to work harder, and the lack of
reverberation makes the slightest error more apparent. By contrast, environments for speech
want less reverberation, although moderate amounts of reflection are useful to reinforce the
sound as long as the overall time that it takes a sound to decay (or die away) isn't too long. A
desirable reverberation time for classrooms is about .75 seconds for interactive (discussion-
based) spaces and 1.0 seconds for lecture halls. By contrast, a symphony hall might have a
two second reverb time. My personal preference for classrooms is toward the reverberant end
of what is considered acceptable.
Education is speech-based, whether solely from presenter to listener or a discussion among a
whole classroom of students, so the nature of speech informs acoustical design for
classrooms. Speech is made up of vowels, which are sounds near the lower end of speech
frequencies ("oo", "uh", "ah", etc.), and consonants, most of which are in the upper part of the
speech range ("t", "s", "k", etc.).
When we abbreviate written language we remove vowels yet retain meaning, but if we
remove only consonants, the sense is usually lost. Take the word baseball, for example, whose
consonants are bsbll, still recognizable, and whose vowells are aea, which we don't recognize
as being related to the word "baseball". Similarly, if you turn up the treble and turn off the
bass in an audio system, speech remains intelligible (try it!). However, if you turn off the treble
and turn up the bass, speech becomes a muddy mess.
This suggests that classroom acoustics needs to absorb more in lower ranges of the speech
window than in the higher ranges . So how do some common classroom materials perform?
NRC, or noise reduction coefficient, is the average the absorption at certain frequencies and
is the rating touted by interior materials manufacturers. NRC is a very imperfect indicator
acoustical performance. As an average rating, it tells you nothing about which parts of the
sound spectrum are being absorbed. Here is a more detailed look broken out by frequency,
with higher numbers absorbing more sound, lower numbers absorbing less.
 
Absorption of sound is particularly difficult in special environments like cafeterias, kitchens,
gymnasiums, and swimming pools. Conventional materials may be subject to damage, or
absorb odors, or be incompatible in other ways. However, materials do exist that work well.
For example, for a gym, walls can be built of a special slotted concrete block. Because the
absorption is inside the block's core, no amount of ball impact can compromise its integrity.
5. Transmission of Sound Between Rooms
The control of noise from one room to another is the other major challenge in acoustics. As
with absorption, different materials transmit more or less sound at different frequencies. In
transmission, blocking the entire speech range is important, and this factor is reflected in the
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STC rating (Sound Transmission Class) of a wall. Unlike the NRC, the STC takes into account
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the performance of the wall at its worst frequency. The STC value of a wall is a relatively
reliable relative indicator of the number of decibels of attenuation that can be expected from
a wall system. STC values are a very useful tool in acoustical design but should be downrated
for actual field conditions, as even the best installation will never match the lab rating.
Critical to sound transmission issues is the background noise in the receiving room. If the
background noise is higher than the amount of sound passing through (and around) the wall,
then users won't hear the sound from the adjacent room. If background is lower than what's
transmitted, then room occupants will hear sounds from the adjoining space. This tells us that
some acoustical problems can be overcome by increasing background sound, but that can
cause problems as people need to raise their voices to be heard.
Transmission tips:
6. Amplification of Sound
Sound amplification goes hand in hand with education in this day and age. Most media now
include sound (videos, CD/DVD, Internet content, etc.), so a room needs to provide for and be
friendly to a loudspeaker system. On the other hand, except for large rooms not commonly
encountered in K-12 education, voice amplification is not normally used, with two significant
exceptions:
If room users include one or more people who are hard of hearing, they may use an assistive
listening system that amplifies the voice of the speaker, and can be coordinated with sound
output from multimedia sources. These systems can be built in or may be portable. They are
effective for one-way communication but can be challenging in a discussion or group project
setting.
Some schools have experimented with amplifying the teacher's voice through ceiling-
mounted loudspeakers. While quite effective as a presentation tool, this does nothing for
discussions, and runs contrary to much of the current direction of education toward more
interaction and involvement of the students. Furthermore, many of these systems use low
quality microphones and loudspeakers that distort the sound. My personal opinion is that this
is not a generally effective solution.
7. Myths and Truths
Myth: control noise just by installing carpet. Carpet is not an acoustical panacea. It is
effective for reducing noise from feet and movement of furniture. However, for absorbing
noise, the carpet system commonly used in schools (glued down) absorbs mostly in the
high frequencies of speech, i.e. the consanants. Padding the feet of furniture can help with
furniture noise, but doesn't help with foot noise.
Myth: Ceiling tile is enough. Acoustical ceiling tile, either glued to the ceiling (usually in 12"
squares) or sitting loosely in the suspended steel grid (usually 2 foot by 2 foot or 2 foot by
4 foot), can be a very effective means of absorbing sound. However,there are many types
of tile with different absorption characteristics (wood fiber, mineral fiber, glass fiber, etc.).
To ensure effectiveness, someone has to match the acoustical problem to the solution.
Furthermore, nearly all ceiling tile is ruined by painting unless very special paints are used
with great care. Many older schools develop acoustical problems when acoustical tile is
painted after it gets dirty or stained or just looks old. "Best Practices" classroom acoustical
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design for classroom interaction usually makes the center of the ceiling reflective, and
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provides high-performance acoustical tile near the perimeter. Misplaced or poorly selected
acoustical material can require louder voices and ultimately vocal stress.
Truth: Heating and cooling systems can be a major acoustical problem. HVAC systems can
contribute to noise three ways.
The heating/ventilating equipment, the fans and terminal units, make noise. This noise can
be transferred directly, usually to the spaces under, over, or next to the unit.
HVAC systemscan also created noise through the distribution system because of excess air
or water velocity (pipes or ducts too small) or through poor workmanship (such as small
holes that create hisses and whistles).
Air ducts can also create a path for sound to travel between rooms, solved only with
expensive sound traps (which also increase fan energy consumption). For this reason, ducts
should generally not go from room to room but should be branched off from a main in the
corridor.
Truth: Outdoor noise can be a significant problem. The location of a school can be a
significant determinant of acoustical noise problems, especially if buildling users are
expected to open windows. Locations near major roads, airports, or any other source of
noise can be a major problem, in some cases even with the windows closed. Measurement
of ambient noise should be a part of site selection for a school.
8. Pattern
For a typical classroom, keep the head wall (front) reflective with hard surfaces. Provide
absorptive materials around the sides and back of the ceiling and the upper part of the
wall, using a high NC material (.8 or higher) such as one inch thick compressed fiberglass.
Provide a relatively non-absorbent material in the middle of the ceiling and on the rest of
the wall surfaces. Consider using carpet to reduce foot and furniture noise (or use other
methods). Also consider a sloping ceiling at the front of the classroom to reflect more
sound out into the room.
 
 
 
Absorption In acoustics, the energy of sound waves being taken in and trapped within a
material rather than being bounced off or reflected. Materials are rated in terms of their
ability to absorb sounds.
Articulation Class (AC) Rates the listener's ability to understand the spoken work within a
space, expressed as a decimal with 1.0 being perfectly understandable. The privacy index is
derived from the A1 calculation. Lower A1 ratings (less than 0.2) indicate that adjacent spoken
words are less intelligible, therefore less distracting. The sum of the weighted sound
attenuations in a series of 15 test bands. Note: AC has replaced Noise Isolation Class (NIC) as
the accepted industry standard performance value. NIC is based on hearing sensitivity rather
than discernment of actual speech, which is the primary concern in open office layouts
prevalent in acoustical design work. Verify the rating methodolgy with manufacturer's
published data.

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Ceiling Attenuation Class (CAC) Rates a ceiling's efficiency as a barrier to airborne sound
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transmission between adjacent closed offices. Shown as a minimum value, previously
expressed as CSTC (Ceiling Sound Transmission Class). A single-figure rating derived from the
normalized ceiling attenuation values in accordance with classification ASTM E 413, except
that the resultant rating shall be designated ceiling attenuation class. (Defined in ASTM E
1414.) An acoustical unit with a high CAC may have a low NRC.
DBA (A-weighted decibel) A single-number measurement based on the decibel but weighted
to approximate the response of the human ear with respect to frequencies.
Decibel (dB) - A unit to express differences in power. In acoustics, equal to ten times the
logarithm of the ratio of one sound and lower-intensity reference sound. One decibel
indicates a difference of about 26% and is about the smallest change the ear can detect. The
dB level is a logarithm quantity; the maximum normal level is approximately 120dB
Fiberglass Panels - Glass strands laid in mats and formed into a rigid or semi-rigid board,
sometimes requiring a separate stable material laminated to the fiberglass.
Mineral Wool - A man-made wool-like material of fine inorganic fibers made from slag, used
as loose fill or formed into blanket, batt, clock, board, or slab shapes for thermal and
acoustical insulation.
Noise Reduction Coefficient (NRC) - Average sound absorption coefficient measured at four
frequencies: 250, 500, 1,000 and 2,000 Hz which rates how well a ceiling or wall panel absorbs
sound. NRC is the fraction of sound energy, averaged over all angles of direction and from
low to high sound frequencies that is absorbed and not reflected.
Reverberation Time - Time required for a sound to decay to a value one millionth of its
original intensity or to drop 60 decibels.
Sound Transmission Class (STC) - A single-number rating of a wall or ceiling's efficiency as a
barrier to airborne sound at 16 speech frequencies from 125 to 4000 Hz. STC is a decibel
measure of the difference between the sound energy striking the panel or construction on
one side and the sound energy transmitted from the other side.

Praveen Mishra
Praveen Specification Consultant at Hilti … Follow
Mishra

1 comment

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zeni zeni shariff 3y

shariff Independent E-Learning Professional

Very insightful info. Thank you for sharing it. Best wishes,
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