Acoustic Comfort in Atria Covered by Novel Structural Skins

In large rooms, where many people gather such as atria, food courts or restaurants, relatively high noise levels can occur, due to so called “Lombard effect”. The “Lombard effect” is a reflex of vocal chords that relates to changes of the voice characteristics in noisy background. Typically an increase of the vocal intensity, the fundamental voice frequency, and the word duration will occur. Noise levels in an enclosed place are influenced not only by the amount and character of sound sources present, but also by the overall reverberation of sound in the space.This article deals with the investigation of the acoustic conditions in three large gathering places covered by glass and foils. We focus on the investigation of the influence of the amount and position of sound absorption in atria on their reverberation time and on the occurrence of various sound phenomena, such as flutter echoes, focusing of sound etc. Results of the measurements are used for calibration of acoustical models. Different architectural solutions simulated in ray-based software are compared.