Study of noise absorption characteristics for current building materials applied in industrial and office rooms

Introduction: In Iran country, there is a lack of reliable data on acoustic characteristics of building materials applied in the offices and industrial rooms. This study aimed to investigate noise absorption characteristics for current building and acoustics materials and provided the acoustic database. Method:  In this cross sectional study, the minimum of 60 building and acoustic materials were tested in the acoustics laboratory located in the school of health. Measuring the absorption coefficient was performed using the Impedance Tube (SW60, BSWA) along with 1/4’’ Microphone (MPA416) and power amplifier (PA50) in frequency range from 125 to 6300 Hz according to ISO10534-2. The data was analyzed using Excel 2013 software. Results: The results of the sound absorption coefficients for different types of materials were presented based on octave band. The results showed that the increase of sound absorptions by rising the thickness of the chemical foams. The highest absorptions were observed in the medium and high frequencies. However, the impact of materials density on the increase of sound absorption is inconsiderable compared with materials thickness. In view point of sound absorption, the polyurethane foams have better performance than the polyethylene foams. Conclusion: Based on the obtained acoustics database, acoustics professionals can conducted more reliable evaluation about acoustic condition of residential, industrial and office rooms in the design and operation phases. The results confirmed that, material thickness is one of the main features affecting sound absorption especially for high efficiency absorbents like chemical foam.&nbsp