Prediction of reverberation time using the residual minimization method

In many practical situations the assumption of sound field dispersion needed for the application of the Sabine’s theory is not fulfilled. In general, sound field is sufficiently dispersed if there are no large differences in the dimensions of the room, limiting partitions are not parallel, or the sound absorbing material is uniformly distributed. In practice, very few of these requirements are satisfied. As a result, a number of other formulas describing reverberation time have been created, for example Fitzroy’s or Neubauer’s formulas. However, these methods in many cases differ significantly from the actual measurements. The paper presents a method used to estimate reverberation time as well as its applicability potential involving laboratory models and auditorium rooms. The proposed method can be classified into a group of learning methods and involves the use of statistical methods which allow for approximation with the use of the least squares method.     

The influence of absorption factors on the sensitivity of a virtual room’s sound field to scattering coefficients

Currently there is limited information on what scattering coefficients (SCs) to assign materials in geometrical room acoustic computer models. As a result, room modelers rely on general guidelines and intuition when assigning SCs. How sensitive is the predicted sound field to the user’s choice of scattering coefficients? The sound field’s sensitivity depends on its diffusivity (without SCs); the more diffuse the room’s sound field is, the less sensitive the virtual room is to the selection of SCs. In rooms with no fittings to diffuse sound energy, the sound field diffusivity is influenced by (1) room shape, (2) volume, (3) amount and (4) location of absorption, and (5) the choice of SCs. This investigation focuses only on the latter three factors. A rectangular room is modeled in ODEON v6.5 with 10 absorption schemes. These schemes vary in terms of the area of mirrored reflective surfaces, average absorption coefficient, and standard deviation of absorption. The amount of diffuse reflections at each room boundary as dictated by the SC is increased uniformly in each room. Changes in the room sound field, in particular in the reverberation time (T30), are examined at each step. Sound field diffusivity, and consequently a virtual room model’s sensitivity to SCs, is found to depend most on the area of mirrored reflective surfaces. Also, a proposed quantity called the Scattering Sensitivity Index appears to predict sound field diffusivity.     

On site validation of sound absorption measurements of occupied pews

Laboratory measurements of sound absorption by audiences are known to be scarcely reliable when applied to actual rooms as a consequence of several problems, among which the different area of the “sample” and the different distribution of the reflected sound may play important roles. When dealing with worship places, characterized by a variable degree of occupation and much lower absorption due to unoccupied seats, things become more complicated as absorption seems to be proportional to the number of occupants rather than to the area they cover (as normally accepted in performing spaces). The combination of these variables has been investigated by taking advantage of laboratory measurements and analysing their application to six churches, where on site measurements of reverberation time were carried out with and without occupation. The results are discussed both in terms of simple prediction formulae (Sabine, Eyring, and Arau-Purchades) and of computer simulations, showing that laboratory measurements may be reliably used in computer simulations (at least in the frequency range from 500 Hz on). At low frequencies greater attention must be paid as the absorption coefficients need to be corrected as a function of the actual distribution of the sound field in the room.     

Absorbing surfaces in ray-tracing programs for coupled spaces

Nowadays architects commonly use the ‘coupled space concept’; examples are mezzanines, half-open office spaces and exhibition rooms. There is a need to predict acoustical quantities for this category of spaces, since half-open spaces may be a cause of noise annoyance. The transmission of sound between coupled spaces depends on design decisions like position, shape and dimensions of the surfaces and on the reflection characteristics. This paper deals with some problems related to the application of absorbing surfaces in coupled rooms, especially when they are modelled in a ray-tracing program. Absorption coefficients from meausurements in reverberation chambers may exceed 1.0 and they do not bear any information about angle dependent behavior, so an extra conversion must be made into input values for the ray-tracing model. Therefore ray-tracing calculations have been performed in a computer model of a reverberation chamber. From a comparison study between measurements and calculations in three coupled rooms it is found that the accuracy is good, provided that the sound reflections on the walls are introduced as angle dependent. Care should be taken in choosing a diffusion factor of flat surfaces.     

Laboratory measurement of sound absorption of occupied pews and standing audiences

Places of worship, as well as other performing spaces or large arenas are characterized by lightweight pews or seats, with moderate or negligible upholstery, leading to very low absorption coefficients. Consequently, the audience becomes the most important sound absorbing element, capable of playing a fundamental role in determining the acoustic characteristics of the space. Consequently accurate knowledge of its acoustic properties is required for any design purpose. Several studies have been carried out with reference to audiences seated on upholstered theatre seats but there is a considerable lack of information about occupied pews. The well known difficulty of taking into account edge effects during such measurements poses further questions as well as the effect of the density of occupation, and the seasonal variations due to clothing. This paper presents the results of a series of laboratory measurements aimed at clarifying such aspects. The measurements showed that the edge effects are negligible and that total absorption is better related to the number of persons present than to the area they cover. Nonetheless, as the density grows, or when the audience is seated, there is a reduction in absorption which may be explained by the reduction in exposed body surface. Lightweight clothes show a considerable reduction in sound absorption over all the frequency bands, suggesting that significant seasonal fluctuations in reverberation time should be expected in places where the audience is the only sound absorbing surface.     

Acoustic absorption material optimisation in the mid–high frequency range

Acoustic modelling, applicable to poroelastic materials in a wide frequency range, is time consuming. This paper offers an energy method for optimising absorption coefficients at the boundaries of an acoustic cavity. The influence of absorption coefficients on this proposed energy method will be examined first. The next step will seek to optimise the location of absorbing materials. Numerical results will prove the method’s effectiveness. Improvements in the overall optimisation process will also be proposed. A model based on polynomial interpolations will be developed in order to further reduce time consumption.     

Acoustic design of small rectangular rooms: Normal frequency statistics

The subject of discrete modes in small rectangular rooms has been considered. A new procedure for selecting optimum geometric proportions of rooms has been proposed, taking into account the eigenfrequencies up to the Schroeder frequency and considering also the surface averaged sound absorption coefficient (α) of a given room. This new procedure leads to a series of plots describing the geometric proportions of small rectangular rooms corresponding to the smoothest frequency response for different absorption conditions. When taking α into account, the range of the acceptable dimension ratios X:Y has proved relatively wide, so the standard deviation calculated for the distances between subsequent modes does not exceed 1.5 (as in Bolt’s work). However, the range of the acceptable dimension ratios decreases with decreasing α and for mean absorption coefficient lower or equal 0.3 there are only a few of the ratios for which a uniform distribution of eigenmodes is obtained.     

Prediction of the reverberation absorption coefficient of finite-size membrane absorbers

This paper presents a method to predict the reverberation absorption coefficient of a finite-size membrane absorbers composed of a single- or double-leaf membrane structure of various configurations. In order to predict the sound absorptivity of such an absorber, it is needed to consider that sound is incident from both sides of the absorber, which has not been accounted for the previous studies on membrane absorbers. The edge effect also needs to be considered if the absorber is rather small. The present method is established based on the theory for absorbers hanged in a reverberation chamber developed by Fujiwara and Makita [J Acoust Soc Jpn (E) 1980;1:37-45]. The same theory requires the fraction of energy dissipation in the absorber, which can be obtained by the difference of absorption and transmission coefficients, and the difference is calculated by the theories for various membrane structures presented in the authors’ previous work. An experimental study was also conducted to validate the present method: the predicted values showed good agreement with the measured ones. The numerical examples calculated by the present method are also presented to discuss the effect of the various control parameters, and it is suggested how to improve the sound absorption performance of double-leaf membrane absorbers with a permeable and an impermeable leaves.     

Estimation of the absorption coefficients of the surfaces of classrooms

Measurements of early-decay time and multivariable linear-regression techniques were used to estimate the 125-8000-Hz octave-band absorption coefficients of eight types of surfaces in university classrooms. The eight types were ‘hard surfaces’, ‘paneled surfaces’ (including hard seats and windows), ‘glued-on acoustical tiles’, ‘suspended acoustical ceilings’, ‘carpeted surfaces’, ‘upholstered seats’, ‘porous absorbers’ and ‘Helmholtz-resonator absorbers’. In general, resulting estimates were statistically significant, physically realistic and in good agreement with previous results. Values for suspended acoustical ceilings were significantly lower than published data.     

水平极化光在单轴吸收晶体中的传播

根据光在各向同性吸收介质中传播的分析方法,引入了波法线矢量传播常量,讨论了水平极化光在单轴吸收晶体中的传播规律,得到了波法线折射率、光线折射率、吸收系数等描述吸收晶体性质和光传播性质的物理量的表达式,推导出透明晶体的相应公式.数值计算表明,由该法得到的晶体表面的反射和透射系数与用复折射率表示法得到的结论一致.     

Acoustic characterization of on-stage performers in performing spaces

The influence of on-stage performers on the acoustic characteristics of performing spaces is significant because the musicians are absorptive and close to the sound source. However, the acoustic information of the musicians and their effect on absorption, scattering, and diffusion remain unclear. The acoustic characteristics of musicians were measured in a reverberation chamber and a semi-anechoic chamber while varying the type of clothes, the instruments, and seating density. The clothing worn showed a larger impact on the absorption per person, whereas the addition of cellos resulted in low-frequency absorption per person. The addition of cellos also increased the scattering and diffusion characteristics. Finally, the total absorption by the musicians under various conditions was analyzed in a concert hall using the simple Sabine equation where the influence of the musician’s instruments resulted in reverberation time of more than 0.1 s decrease with about 90 musicians on stage. However, the influences of additional musical instruments resulted in no significant difference in the reverberation time compared to the people alone. In addition, scattering due to the various conditions of orchestra such as the seating density and the addition of musical instrument was not a significant predictor of reverberation time.     

Determination of the sound energy level of a gunshot and its applications in room acoustics

In some cases an impulsive noise source such as a gunshot can be a preferred alternative when investigating building acoustics, including sound insulation measurements, when compared to conventional steady state noise sources. A gun equipped with blank cartridges is an impulsive noise source that is lightweight and small enough to be easily transported. The differences in the noise characteristics between individual cartridges for the same gun are usually small, so the impulsive source can be replicated to a high degree. This paper is focused on the practical application of the sound exposure levels produced by a gunshot with a known sound energy level in the rooms under investigation. In this way, the equipment and methods required by the conventional method are simplified significantly. Furthermore, reverberation times need not be measured, since the equivalent absorption area can be directly obtained from the measured sound exposure levels. Using Green’s theorem, the roles of the sound source and measuring microphone were exchanged, which simplified the determination of sound insulation as it was easier to change the position of the gun than the microphone. The results obtained using the impulsive noise source were in good agreement with those obtained using the conventional method. Above 100 Hz, their difference in any frequency band of interest was less than 1 dB.     

基于植物油可见吸收光谱的相关系数鉴别特级初榨橄榄油

目前市场上的橄榄油品牌很多,质量参差不齐,亟需完善橄榄油的等级分类检测和特级初榨橄榄油的鉴别方法。可见吸收光谱光谱法可在不直接接触样品的情况下对样品进行无添加试剂的探测,因此为实现特级初榨橄榄油的鉴别,采用可见吸收光谱法对不同种类植物油进行了光谱测量。实验结果发现特级初榨橄榄油在500~780 nm波段内具有4个明显的吸收峰,而其他种类植物油在此波段内吸光度较弱或无吸收峰,且同种植物油不同品牌之间的光谱特征极其相似。采用相关系数比对不同种类植物油可见吸收光谱,分别计算了四个不同波长范围内植物油的可见吸收光谱的相关系数,实验发现不同波长范围内的植物油可见光谱相关系数差别较大。在520～700 nm范围内,特级初榨橄榄油间的光谱相关系数在0.999 6以上,特级初榨橄榄油与其他种类植物油的光谱相关系数均低于0.267 8,特级初榨橄榄油与其他等级橄榄油的光谱相关系数在0.194 6～0.835 8之间。研究结果表明可见吸收光谱相关系数法是一种快速非接触式鉴别特级初榨橄榄油的可行性方法。建立了一种特级初榨橄榄油快速鉴别方法,即可见吸收光谱相关系数法。该方法在特级初榨橄榄油的实际鉴别中具有一定的应用价值。     

A proposed method for measuring the noise of domestic appliances

The method was developed on behalf of the Society of British Gas Industries, as an alternative to reverberation chamber power measurements on gas appliances. It is equally applicable to other than gas-fired domestic appliances and consists of producing acoustically-average domestic environments in a test chamber; the advantage being that measurements made in the simulated environments and automatically compensated for the individual directional characteristics of the appliance under test.The standardisation of average domestic environments involved the measurement of the reverberation times of a hundred domestic rooms.¹ From these measurements it was possible to estimate the expected deviations in measured noise levels between different rooms. Measurements made on a standard noise source in the simulated rooms and in the field show the predicted spreads in noise level to be approximately as expected.     

Effects of edge screens on the absorption of blocks of theatre chairs

This paper reports new measurement results investigating the use of screens around samples of theatre chairs to minimize edge effects when measuring theatre chair absorption in reverberation chambers. The absorption measurements included both full scale and scale model measurements in reverberation chambers and a model recital hall. The use of screens has been proposed to better approximate the sound absorption of the larger blocks of chairs in auditoria. The method of measuring the absorption of blocks of chairs with screens around their edges and located in the corner of a reverberation chamber did not give results indicative of the values obtained for larger areas in auditoria. The addition of screens around samples of chairs did not eliminate the variation of absorption coefficients with perimeter/area ratio. The results of extrapolations from measurements of blocks of screened chairs to infinite samples gave lower absorption coefficients than found for blocks of unscreened chairs. The absorption of chairs in large performance halls can best be predicted using the P/A method to extrapolate from reverberation chamber measurements of smaller samples of unscreened chairs, with a range of P/A values, to the larger samples and lower P/A ratios of blocks of chairs typical of performance spaces.     

Measurement of sound absorption coefficients of flat surfaces in a workshop

To improve the acoustic treatment of facings and provide appropriate solutions for noise control at workplace, it is necessary to develop methods of acoustic characterization of the walls in industrial halls. Sound absorption coefficient measurement in industrial rooms is however quite a difficult task because of the partially reverberant conditions. This work describes the measurement of the sound absorption coefficient of flat panels subject to small angle sound incidence, in an industrial hall using an experimental device equipped with an acoustic array. The directivity of this array has been optimized so that the major part of the received acoustic energy would come from one portion only of the investigated facing, this, in turn attenuating the reflected beams due to the reverberation. This new device includes an impulse sound source targeting the panels. The present article focuses mainly on the sound source design and implementation. It also describes some sound absorption measurements carried in a semi-anechoic chamber and in an industrial hall in order to examine the performance of the device. Sound absorption coefficients of several standard liners obtained through this device have been compared to those resulted from the two microphone technique.     

Linear and nonlinear optical absorption coefficients and binding energy of a spherical quantum dot

The binding energy and wavefunctions of the 1s, 1p, 1d and 1f energy states of a spherical quantum dot (QD) with parabolic potential were calculated by using a method which is a combination of the quantum genetic algorithm (QGA) and the Hartree–Fock–Roothaan (HFR) approach. In addition, the linear and the third-order nonlinear optical absorption coefficients based on optical transitions in QDs with and without impurity were calculated. The results show that the parabolic potential has a great effect not only on the binding energies and but also on the optical absorption coefficients. Moreover, the calculated results also reveal that the linear and nonlinear optical absorption coefficients are strongly affected by the existence of impurity and the incident optical intensity.     

Measurements of ultrasound velocity and attenuation in numerical anisotropic porous media compared to Biot’s and multiple scattering models

This article quantitatively investigates ultrasound propagation in numerical anisotropic porous media with finite-difference simulations in 3D. The propagation media consist of clusters of ellipsoidal scatterers randomly distributed in water, mimicking the anisotropic structure of cancellous bone. Velocities and attenuation coefficients of the ensemble-averaged transmitted wave (also known as the coherent wave) are measured in various configurations. As in real cancellous bone, one or two longitudinal modes emerge, depending on the micro-structure. The results are confronted with two standard theoretical approaches: Biot’s theory, usually invoked in porous media, and the Independent Scattering Approximation (ISA), a classical first-order approach of multiple scattering theory. On the one hand, when only one longitudinal wave is observed, it is found that at porosities higher than 90% the ISA successfully predicts the attenuation coefficient (unlike Biot’s theory), as well as the existence of negative dispersion. On the other hand, the ISA is not well suited to study two-wave propagation, unlike Biot’s model, at least as far as wave speeds are concerned. No free fitting parameters were used for the application of Biot’s theory. Finally we investigate the phase-shift between waves in the fluid and the solid structure, and compare them to Biot’s predictions of in-phase and out-of-phase motions.     

Ray-tracing prediction of optimal conditions for speech in realistic classrooms

Recent papers have discussed the optimal reverberation times in classrooms for speech intelligibility, based on the assumption of a diffuse sound field. Here this question was investigated for more ‘typical’ classrooms with non-diffuse sound fields. A ray-tracing model was modified to predict speech-intelligibility metric U₅₀. It was used to predict U₅₀ in various classroom configurations for various values of the room absorption, allowing the optimal absorption (that predicting the highest U₅₀)—and the corresponding optimal reverberation time—to be identified in each case. The range of absorptions and reverberation times corresponding to high speech intelligibility were also predicted in each case. Optimal reverberation times were also predicted from the optimal surface-absorption coefficients using Sabine and Eyring versions of diffuse-field theory, and using the diffuse-field expression of Hodgson and Nosal. In order to validate the ray-tracing model, predictions were made for three classrooms with highly diffuse sound fields; these were compared to values obtained by the diffuse-field models, with good agreement. The methods were then applied to three ‘typical’ classrooms with non-diffuse fields. Optimal reverberation times increased with room volume and noise level to over 1 s. The accuracy of the Hodgson and Nosal expression varied with classroom size and noise level. The optimal average surface-absorption coefficients varied from 0.19 to 0.83 in the different classroom configurations tested. High speech intelligibility was, in general, predicted for a wide range of coefficients, but could not be obtained in a large, noisy classroom.     

Efficiency of ionizers in removing airborne particles in indoor environments

Air ionizers are increasingly being used to clean indoor environments of particle pollution. We tested the efficiency of a small negative ion generator (Aironic AH-202) in removing ultrafine particles from indoor environments. A high-flow air filter fitted with a HEPA filter was used to compare the removal efficiencies. We estimated the percentage of particles removed when the ionizer was operated within a closed chamber of volume 1 m³, in a closed unventilated room of volume 20 m³ and in three force-ventilated rooms of volume 32, 45 and 132 m³. The closed chamber studies were conducted with ambient particles and with smoke at particle number concentrations of 5 × 10³ and 7 × 10⁴ cm⁻³, respectively. In both cases, 70% of the particles were removed by the ionizer in 15 min. In general, the particle removal efficiency of both the ionizer and the air filter decreased as the room size increased. Both devices were also more effective in unventilated rooms than in ventilated rooms. The most important finding in this study was that, while the air filter was more effective than the ionizer in the two small rooms, the ionizer was clearly more effective than the air filter in the three largest rooms. We conclude that air ionizers are more suited than high-flow air filters in removing ultrafine particles from rooms larger than about 25 m³. The investigation also showed that small ions produced by the ionizer, placed in one room, were carried through the air conditioning system into other rooms, effectively removing particles from the air in these rooms in the process.