ITM School of Architecture & Town Planning

Bakshi ka Talab, Mampur Bana , Lucknow

LECTURE - 03

Subject :- Acoustics Studio Directors:-

Code :- AR -805 Asst. Prof. - Ar. Shalini Diwaker
Session :- 2014-15
Year :- 4th Year (8th SEM)

ACOUSTICAL MATERIALS AND CONSTRUCTIONS

SOUND ABSORBING MATERIALS: :

On striking any surface, sound is either absorbed or reflected. The sound energy absorbed by an
absorbing layer is partially converted into heat but mostly transmitted to the other side, unless
such transmission is restrained by a backing of an impervious, heavy, barrier. In other words,
good sound absorber is an efficient sound transmitter and consequently an inefficient sound
insulator.
Sound absorbing materials and constructions used in the acoustical design of auditoriums or for
the sound control of noisy rooms can be classified as
1) porous materials
2) panel or membrane absorbers,
3) cavity resonators.

POROUS MATERIALS:

The basic acoustical characteristic of all porous materials, such as fibreboards, soft plasters,
mineral wools, and isolation blankets, is a cellular network of interlocking pores. Incident sound
energy is converted into heat energy within these pores, while the remainder, reduced energy is
reflected from the surface of the material.
Characteristics:
1. Their sound absorption is more efficient at high frequencies
2. Their acoustical efficiency improves in the low frequency range with increase in thickness
and with distance from baking.

Categories:
1. Prefabricated units
2. Plaster and sprayed-on- materials
3. Blankets.
4. Carpets & fabrics

PREFABRICATED ACOUSTICAL UNITS:

Various types of perforated, imperforated, fissured, or textured cellulose and mineral fiber tiles,
lay in panels, and perforated metal pans with absorbent pads constitute typical units in this group.

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ACOUSTICAL PLASTERS AND SPRAYED-ON MATERIALS:

These acoustical finishes are used mostly for noise reduction purposes and sometimes in
auditoriums where any other acoustical treatment would be impractical because of the curved or
irregular shape of the surface. These are applied in semiplastic consistency, either by spray gun or
by hand troweling.

ACOUSTICAL BLANKETS:

Acoustical blankets are manufactured from rock wool, glass fibers, wood fibers, hair felt, etc.
Generally installed on a wood or metal framing system, these blankets are used for acoustical
purposes for varying thicknesses between 1 & 5 in. Their absorption increases with thickness,
particularly at low frequencies.

CARPETS AND FABRICS:

These absorb airborne sounds and noises within the room, also reduce and in some cases almost
completely eliminate impact noises from above and they eliminate surface noises.

PANEL ABSORBERS:

Any impervious material installed on a solid backing but separated from it by an air space will
act as a panel absorber and will vibrate when struck by sound waves. The flexural vibration of the
panel will then absorb certain amount of incident sound energy by converting it into heat energy.
Among auditorium finishes and constructions the following panel absorbers contribute to low-
frequency absorption: wood and hard board panels, gypsum boards, rigid plastic boards,
windows, doors, glazings, etc.

CAVITY RESONATORS:

This consists of an enclosed body of air confined within rigid walls and connected by a narrow
opening to the surrounding space, in which the sound waves travel. Cavity resonators can be
applied 1) as individual units 2) as perforated panel resonators, 3) as stilt resonators.

INDIVIDUAL CAVITY RESONATOR:

These, made of empty clay vessels of different sizes, were used in medieval Scandinavian
churches. Standard concrete blocks using regular concrete mixture but with slotted cavities,
called soundblox units, constitute a contemporary version of sound resonators.

PERFORATED PANEL RESONATORS:

Perforated panels, spaced away from a solid backing, provide a widely used practical application
of the cavity resonator principle. The air space behind the perforation forms the undivided body
of the resonator, separated into bays by horizontal and vertical elements of the framing system.

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SLIT RESONATORS:

In designing the auditoriums the desired acoustical effect can often be accomplished by using
relatively inexpensive isolation blankets along the room surface. But these need protection
against abrasion. Thus, opportunity to design decorative-surface treatment for protection is
given. The protective screen can consist of a system of wood, metal or plastic salts, cavity
blocks, with series of openings or gaps. This constitutes a stilt resonator.

SPACE ABSORBERS:

When the regular boundary enclosures of an auditorium do not provide suitable or adequate
area for conventional acoustical treatment, sound absorbing objects, called space absorbers,
can be suspended as individual units from the ceiling. These are made of perforated sheets in
the shape of panel, prisms, cubes, spheres, etc., are generally filled or lined with sound
absorbing materials such as rock wool, glass wool, etc. their acoustical efficiency depends on
their spacing. In order to achieve a reasonable amount of room absorption, it is essential that a
large number of space absorbers be used within a space.

VARIABLE ABSORBERS:

For change in RT, various sliding, hinged, movable, and rotator panels have been constructed
that can expose their absorptive or reflective surfaces. Draperies have been installed that can
be spread out on walls or be pulled off into suitable pockets, thus arbitrarily increasing or
reducing the effective absorptive treatment in the room.

ACOUSTICAL CONSTRUCTIONS:

WALL INSULATION: VERTICAL BARRIERS

Wall construction used for sound insulation can be of three types:

1) Rigid and massive homogeneous walls: this consists of stone, brick or concrete masonry,
well plastered on one or both sides. Their sound insulation depends on their weight per unit
area.
2) Partition wall of porous material: these can be of rigid or non-rigid type. In the rigid
partitions, insulation is 10% more.
3) Double wall partition: this consists of plasterboards or fiberboards or plaster on laths on
both the faces, with sound absorbing blankets in between.
4) Cavity wall construction: this is an ideal construction from the point of view of sound
insulation. The gap between two walls can be filled by air or some resilient material.

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FLOORS AND CEILING INSULATION: HORIZONTAL BARRIERS

These act as horizontal barriers to both air-borne and impact noises. Main emphasis is given to
the insulation against the impact noises. This may be done by:

1) Use of resilient material on the floor surfaces: this consists of providing thin concrete slab as
the RCC floor slab, and then providing a soft floor finish material such as linoleum, cork,
asphalt mastic, carpet, etc.
2) Concrete floor floating construction: in this an additional floor is constructed and isolated
from the existing concrete floor.
3) Timber floor floating construction: this is done by employing mineral or glass wool quilt for
isolation purposes. A further improvement in the insulation of such floors is achieved by
employing a plugging or deadening material in the air gap between the wooden joists.
4) Timber floor with suspended ceiling and air space: the highest insulation can be achieved by
using a very heavy ceiling, which are arranged to be independent of the floor by supporting it
on resilient mountings.
5) Skirting: the larger the contact area a skirting provides between the floors and the walls, the
lower would be insulation. For this the lower edge of the skirting is chamfered thus reducing
the area of contact.

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AUDITORIUM DESIGN

BREIF HISTORY:

The auditorium, as a place for listening, developed from the classical open-air theaters, but there
is little evidence that the Greeks and Romans gave particular consideration to acoustical
principles when they selected natural sites and built open-air theaters.
The first reference to architectural acoustics in recorded history is made by Vitruvius (first
century B.C.). In his book, he describes sounding waves as being used in certain open air
theaters, but no evidence exists that the few vases found near the theaters were used for
acoustical purposes.
After the fall of Romans, the only type of auditorium built during the middle ages was church
hall. Middle ages is the council room. Middle of sixteenth century, strolling professional actors in
England used the round, square, or octagonal courtyards of inns as playhouses. In subsequent
centuries, a remarkable number of theaters were built. In seventeenth century, the horseshoe
shaped opera house with a large stage area and stage house, and with ring of boxes, or tiers, on
top of each other, stacked to the ceiling. But in all these no specific steps taken. The first
scientific work was in Athanasius Kircher's, appeared in seventeenth century. Before the
twentieth century, only one audi was acoustically treated.
It was not till twentieth century, that professor W.C. Sabin, did his pioneer work on room
acoustical design. He first designed the coefficient of sound absorption and arrived at a simple
relation between the volume of a room, the amount of sound- absorbing material in it, and its
reverberation time.

DESIGN: FROM THE STANDARDS:

OUTLINE OF ACOUSTICAL REQUIREMENTS:

1) There should be adequate loudness in every part of the auditorium particularly the remote
seats.
2) The sound energy should be uniformly distributed in the room.
3) The audience and the most efficient presentation of the program by the performers should
provide optimum reverberation characteristics in the auditorium to allow the most favorable
reception of the program material.
4) The room should be free of such acoustical defects as echoes, long delayed reflections, flutter
echoes, sound concentrations, distortion, sound shadow, and room resonance.
5) Noises and vibrations which would interfere with listening of performing should be excluded
or reasonably reduced in every part of the room.

ADEQUATE LOUDNESS:
The problem of providing adequate loudness, particularly in medium and large-sized
auditoriums, results from the energy losses of the traveling sound waves and from excessive
absorption by the audience and room contents. Sound energy losses can be reduced and adequate
loudness can be provided in the following ways:
1) The auditorium should be shaped so that the audience is as close to sound source as possible.
2) Sound source should be raised high.
3) The floor where audience is seated should be properly racked. It should not be more than
1in8.

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4) The sound source should be closely and abundantly surrounded with large sound reflective
surfaces. Initial time delay gap between direct and first reflective sound should be relatively
short, possibly not more than 30 milliseconds.
5) Parallelism between opposite sound reflective boundary surfaces, particularly close to the
sound source, should be avoided.

DIFFUSION OF SOUND:

Two important points must be considered in the effort to provide diffusion in a room : the surface
irregularities elements, (coffered ceilings, serrated enclosures, protruding boxes sculptured
surface decorations, deep window reveals, etc) must be abundantly applied and should be
relatively large.

CONTROL OF REVERBERATION:

In the acoustical design of an auditorium, once the optimum RT is at the mid frequency range has
been selected and the RT vs frequency relationship below 500 Hz decided upon, the reverberation
control consists of establishing the total amount of room absorption to be applied by acoustical
finishes, occupants, room contents, etc., in order to produce the selected value of RT. In almost
every auditorium the audience provides most of the absorption, about 5 ft2 sabins per person.
Therefore to have good hearing conditions even in audience absence, the seats should be
upholstered, with underneath side of them also absorptive. Sound absorbing materials should be
all along the boundary surfaces. The acoustical treatment should go first on the rear wall, then on
those portions of the sidewalls, which are farthest from the source or along the perimeter of the
ceiling.

ELIMINATION OF ROOM ACOUSTICSAL DEFECTS:

1) Echo: echo occurs if a minimum interval of 1/25 sec to 1/10 sec elapses between the
perception of the direct and reflected sounds originating from the same source. Since the
speed of sound is about 344 m/sec, the critical time intervals specified above corresponds to
path difference of min. 24 m for speech or 34 m for music between direct and reflected sound.
A sound reflective rear wall, opposite the sound source, is a potential echo-producing surface
in the auditorium unless it is treated or is under deep balcony.

2) Flutter echo: a flutter echo consists of a rapid succession of noticeable small echoes and is
observed when a short burst of sound, such as a clap or shot, is produced between parallel
surfaces. Elimination of parallelism between opposite reflecting surfaces is one way to avoid
flutter echoes.

3) Sound concentration: sound concentrations, sometimes referred to as hot spots are caused
by sound reflections from concave surfaces. If large concave surfaces cannot be avoided or
acoustical treatment is not feasible, these concave surfaces should be laid out in such a
manner that they focus in space outside or above the audience area.

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4) Coupled spaces: if a auditorium is connected to an adjacent reverberant space by means

of open doorways, the two rooms will form open spaces. The undesirable effect of
coupled spaces can be overcome by adequate acoustical separation between the coupled
spaces, by providing approximately the same RT in both spaces or by reducing the RT of
both.

5) Sound shadow: the phenomenon of sound shadow is noticeable under the balcony that
protrudes to far into the air space of an auditorium. Such under spaces, with the depth
exceeding twice the height, should be avoided

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