Acoustic Treatments Aiming to Achieve the Italian Minimum Environmental Criteria (CAM) Standards in Large Reverberant Classrooms
Keywords:
classrooms, clarity, reverberation time, speech intelligibility, Italian Minimum Environmental Criteria.Abstract
A recent Italian legislation has established the Minimum Environmental Criteria (CAM) for any working environment. In regards to schools, adequate acoustic comfort targets are required in terms of noise control and acoustic quality. Schools must comply with the Italian technical standard UNI 11532 for their reverberation time (T), clarity (C50) and speech intelligibility (STI). In classrooms, the following values are required: T<0.7s, C50>0dB, and STI>0.6. In sports facilities such as gyms, the CAM requirements are T<1.5 s, C50> -2 dB, and STI> 0.5. To achieve these objectives, the insertion of acoustic treatments is often unavoidable. The new requests for classrooms are leading acousticians to propose sound correcting interventions in many educational buildings. Acousticians typically use the perfectly diffused theory to calculate the minimum amount of needed sound-absorbing material to comply with current legislation. The purpose of this work is to evaluate the optimal position in which to place the minimum amount of sound-absorbing treatments to reach the CAM in some university classrooms. These classrooms have a marble floor and plastered walls and, at 1.0 kHz, have T values between 2.5 s and 4.5 s, C50 between 3 dB and -0.5 dB, and STI between 0.34 and 0.47. Using an acoustic software, it was possible to estimate the minimum quantity and the optimal placement of the sound-absorbing panels to insert in each classroom to reach the CAM.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright on articles is held by the author(s). The corresponding author has the right to grant on behalf of all authors and does grant on behalf of all authors, a worldwide exclusive licence (or non-exclusive license for government employees) to the Publishers and its licensees in perpetuity, in all forms, formats and media (whether known now or created in the future)
i) to publish, reproduce, distribute, display and store the Contribution;
ii) to translate the Contribution into other languages, create adaptations, reprints, include within collections and create summaries, extracts and/or, abstracts of the Contribution;
iii) to exploit all subsidiary rights in the Contribution,
iv) to provide the inclusion of electronic links from the Contribution to third party material where-ever it may be located;
v) to licence any third party to do any or all of the above.