UNTREF, Sound Engineering, Acoustics Instruments & Measurements

June 2013, Argentina

STATISTICAL ABSORPTION COEFFICIENT MEASUREMENT APPLYING ISO 354:2007

RAMN FACUNDO1
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Univesidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Sound Engineering, Caseros, Argentina. facundo.ramon@gmail.com

1. INTRODUCTION When a sound wave impinges on a boundary (such as a wall) some of the energy is reflected, some is transmitted and some is absorbed. The proportion of energy absorbed by the boundary compared to the proportion of energy reflected and transmitted is indicated by the absorption coefficient of the material. It describes the capability of the material to transduce sound energy into another type of energy such as heat [1]. The main acoustical parameter related to absorption is RT (reverberation time); the less energy is absorbed in a closed room, the larger reverberation time is achieved. Therefore, a comparative method can be used for calculating absorption coefficients using an easy-measurable parameter such as RT under an acoustically controlled room. ISO 354:2007 [2] normalized a measuring method using this principle. The objective of this paper is to measure the absorption coefficient of one specimen following the established parameters by ISO 354:2007 under no ideal conditions, namely: without a reverberation chamber and with no control of background noise. 2. PROCEDURE The principle of this method (described in ISO 354:2007 section 4) is to measure the RT of a reverberation room with and without the specimen under analysis mounted inside. Then, knowing the surfaces and volumes of each element involved, the absorption coefficient can be calculated. 2.1. Room
Figure 2: Specimen mounted in the room.

Figure 1: 3D representation of the room with specimen mounted.

2.2.

Specimen

The specimen under analysis is an absorber panel made of fiberglass, it is covered with fabric and its frame is made of wood (see fig. 2).

The room used for this measurement is an empty classroom from Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero. It has rectangular shape (see fig. 1) of 3.0 m per 6.1 m, and 3.0 m hight. Interior walls are made of concrete and ceiling is made of absorbent panels, the floor is made of concrete and covered with rubber. Its total volume is 55.0 m3 and it has 72.7 m2 of total surface.
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Its normal usage is hanged to a wall. 2.3. Equipment

The equipment used is listed below:

 Computer MacBook Pro; Software Audacity with Aurora Plug-ins; Apache OpenOffice; External sound card Focusrite Saffire Pro 14; Four Microphones Earthworks M50; Sound level meter type 1 Svantek 959; Tape measure; Dodecahedron Outline with power source and subwoofer; 2.4. Methodology

With these values it is possible to calculate the absorption coefficient of a plane absorber, defined as follow: !! =
!! !

(1)

where S is the exposed surface of the specimen and A ! is the equivalent sound absorption area of the test specimen defined as follow: ! ! = 55.3!
! !! !!

! !! !!

(2)

First, background noise level was measured with the sound level meter with slow integration time during 1 minute using Z weighting at three positions of the room. Then the sound source level was set to overcome per more than 20 dB the background noise with pink noise. The sound source was placed in a corner of the room and four microphones were distributed according to the ISO standards [2]. Second, the RT of the empty room was obtained. A 30 seconds logarithmic sine sweep from 20 Hz to 20 kHz was generated using Aurora plug-ins and reproduced with the dodecahedral sound source. The room response was received with the microphones and digitally saved in the computer for later analysis. Measurements were repeated 4 times in order to obtain 16 different RTs. The ISO standard recommends only 12 measurements, but, because of the symmetrical and cubic shape of the room, it was decided to increase the number of measurements in order to decrease the possibilities of mistake. Two source positions and four microphones, each with two positions, give a total of 16 combinations. Third, the specimen was mounted in the room. Type A mounting [2] without edge covering was decided because it represents the normal usage of the specimen, normally the panels are placed with the edges exposed. Because of the reduced size of the room, it was not possible to cover the recommended [2] surface with the specimen and the distances from the wall were smaller than the recommended one. The covered surface was 2.9 m2 and the perimeter of the exposed edges was 7.8 m. Fourth, the RT with the specimen mounted was measured. Same signal, sound level and microphones and source combination of positions as the measurement with empty room were used. All the audio data was stored as .wav files with 16-bit resolution and 44.1 kHz of sample rate. Impulse responses of the room were obtained with Aurora Convolver plug-in and filtered with Audacity third octave band filters. From each third octave band of each impulse the RT was obtained using Aurora Acoustical Parameters plug-in. All the data was export to Apache OpenOffice to be processed. The RT of empty room and of room with mounted specimen are shown in table 2.
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where V is the volume of the room, c is speed of sound (considered 343 m/s for both measurements in this paper), !! is RT of the room with mounted specimen and !! is RT of the empty room. The power attenuation coefficient m defined by ISO 354:2007 [2] is not considered because climatic conditions were not changed during both measurements. Results are shown in table 4. Finally, the repeatability of the RT measurements was calculated as shown in next equation.
!!!" (! ) ! !.!"!
!.!" !

! .!

(3)

where T is the RT measured, ! is the center frequency of the third octave band and N is the number of measurements made for that RT. In this case, ! = 16. Results are shown in table 3 and figure 3. 3. RESULTS Levels shown in table 1 are the result of averaging three measurements positions inside the room.
Table 1: Background Noise and sound source level.
Background Noise Sound Source Level 67.1 dBZ (Leq1min) 89.2 dBA (Leq30sec)

The following table shows the reverberation times obtained by the analysis of the recorded signals. Each audio file was filtered in third octave band using filters of Audacity software and RT was obtained using Aurora Acoustical Parameters plug-in. The final result is the arithmetic average of all the RTs for each third octave band.

Table 2: RT in third octave band from 100 Hz to 5 kHz of the empty room and with the specimen mounted.
Hz RT Empty [s] RT Mounted [s] 100 125 160 2,55 1,67 200 2,58 1,64 250 2,60 1,56 315 2,65 1,66

Next table shows the final ! obtained with equations 1 and 2.

Table 4: Alpha of the panel in third octave band from 100 Hz to 5 kHz.
Hz 100 125 160 0,64 200 0,69 250 0,79 315 0,70

3,73 3,34 2,86 1,71

Hz RT Empty [s] RT Mounted [s]

400

500

630 2,71 1,77

800 2,69 1,86

1k 2,59 1,92

1,25k 2,60 1,86

!!

0,25 0,89

2,66 2,79 1,68 1,79

Hz

400 500 630 800 1k 1,25k

0,21 0,18 0,20 0,16 0,14 0,14

!!

Hz RT Empty [s] RT Mounted [s]

1,6k

2k

2,5k 3,15k 2,41 1,78 2,35 1,69

4k 2,19 1,57

5k 1,98 1,55

Hz

1,6k 2k 2,5k 3,15k 4k 5k

0,14 0,14 0,14 0,16 0,17 0,13

2,60 2,50 1,87 1,82

!!

As it was expected, the RT with the specimen mounted is shorter than the RT of the empty room. Next table shows repeatability r per third octave band. It was calculated with the definition given by ISO (eq. 3). Number of repetitions is 16 and it is calculated for each third octave band for both RTs.
Table 3: Repeatability of both RT measurements in third octave band from 100 Hz to 5 kHz.
Hz r Empty r Mounted 100 0,08 0,10 125 160 200 0,07 0,09 250 0,06 0,08 315 0,06 0,07

4. CONCLUSIONS The rooms dimension facilitates the generation of stationary waves. Its sides are multiple of 3, therefore, waves with wavelengths multiple of 3 can generate normal modes of vibration. This happens at 57 Hz, 114 Hz, 228 Hz 343 Hz, 457 Hz and so on. Despite having made an average, this situation adds uncertainty to the measurements. The coefficients obtained are the expected ones (see table 4). The specimen is a bass trap and is supposed to have considerable absorption at low frequencies. There are high values at 125 and 250 Hz centered third octave band that can be affected by the room response. Repeatability values are also the expected ones (table 3); the use of logarithmic sine sweep method instead of interrupted noise method generates solid and repeatable results. 5. REFERENCES [1] Raichel D. R., The Science and Applications of Acoustics. Second Edition. Springer. New York. USA. 2006. [2] ISO 354:2007(E), Acoustic Measurement of sound absorption in a reverberation room.

0,08 0,08 0,11 0,10

Hz r Empty r Mounted

400 500 630 800 1k 1,25k

0,05 0,06 0,04 0,04 0,05 0,05 0,04 0,04 0,03 0,04 0,03 0,03

Hz r Empty r Mounted

1,6k 2k 2,5k 3,15k 4k 5k

0,03 0,03 0,02 0,02 0,03 0,02 0,02 0,02 0,02 0,02 0,02 0,02

It is also shown in a graphic to facilitate the visual analysis.

!#&" 9:;.<" !#%$" !#%" !#!$" !" %!" %!!" 5678" %!!!" %!!!!" =4>/.(0"

'()*+,("-.*/0*10"2(,3*+4/"

Figure 3: Repeatability from100 Hz to 5 kHz.

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