Survey Test Methods for Acoustic Measurements in Buildings

Abstract

A survey test method was developed for measuring the airborne and impact sound insulation and the noise from equipment in buildings. The method is based on manual scanning to obtain the average sound pressure level in a room and on the use of tabular reverberation time data. The uncertainty produced by manual scanning is quite small. The influence of the reverberation time table can also be kept small if a certain complexity of the table is taken as the limit of simplification. Furnished rooms, and several types of unfurnished room constructions are therefore treated separately. The basic principle of the CEN survey method was recently agreed upon by the working group responsible. Additional field measurements should be carried out with reference to ISO 140-4, –5 and –7 to obtain more reliable data on the accuracy in all cases of furnished and unfurnished rooms. If, with reference to the methods of ISO 140, the preliminary estimated uncertainty of single number quantities of ±2 dB proved to be correct, the CEN survey method would be a useful alternative for measurements and verification tests in the field. As to the measurement of noise from housing equipment, some open questions remain to be solved.

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References

Directive related to building construction products 89/106/EEC, 1988.

Interpretative Document Nr. 5 – Essential Requirement PROTECTION AGAINST NOISE, 1991.

ISO 140, Acoustics – Measurement of sound insulation in buildings and of building elements – Part 4: Field measurements of airborne sound insulation between rooms, Part 5: Field measurement of the sound insulation of facades, Part 7: Field measurements of impact sound insulation of floors.

ISO 140–2: 1991, Acoustics – Measurement of sound insulation in buildings and of building elements – Part 2: Determination, verification and application of precision data.

ISO 717, Acoustics – Rating of sound insulation in buildings and of building elements – Part 1: Airborne sound insulation. Part 2: Impact sound insulation.

Acoustics – Field measurements of airborne and impact sound insulation and of sound pressure levels from equipment – Survey method. 10th draft CEN/TC126/WG1 N 181 October 1995.

ISO/CD 10052: 1991, Building Acoustics – Short test method for measurement of airborne sound insulation in buildings, Building Acoustics – Short test method for measurement of impact sound. (ISO/TC43/SC2/WG10, Convener: R. Mackenzie, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh).