A laboratory and simulation comparison of the effectiveness of open entry rooms for protection from high noise levels

The potential of differently shaped barriers to provide a ‘sound shadow’ in an otherwise noisy environment was investigated. A doorless enclosure of two three-sided interlocking rectangular barriers was found to produce attenuation of over 9 dB.To enable these, and similar, barriers to be incorporated with an existing noise control simulation program, computer studies were carried out to simulate the experimental results. These provided close comparison with the empirical data except at the centre of the configuration where simulated values were always higher than laboratory measurements. Reasons for these differences are deduced.