Practical methods to define scattering coefficients in a room acoustics computer model

To predict acoustics of rooms using computer programs based on geometrical assumptions, it is important that scattering is included in the calculations. Therefore scattering is usually included in terms of scattering coefficients which are assigned to each surface telling the software the ratio between the part of the reflected energy which is not being reflected specularily and the total reflected energy. However the effective scattering coefficient of a surface depends not only on the roughness of the surface material indeed diffraction caused by limited dimensions of the surface as well as edge diffraction also causes scattering. For complex rooms it can be difficult to give a reasonable estimate to the magnitudes of scattering coefficients if these should also include diffraction and even if these frequency dependent coefficients could be obtained in the design phase, the processes of obtaining the data becomes quite time consuming thus increasing the cost of design. In this paper, practical methods to define scattering coefficients, which is based on an approach of modeling surface scattering and scattering caused by limited size of surface as well as edge diffraction are presented. The predicted and measured acoustic parameters in real rooms have been compared in order to verify the practical approaches recommended in the paper.