The influence of the distribution of sound absorbing materials on the estimation of reverberation time in rooms

Reverberation time in rooms depends on many factors, e.g. cubature, surface of envelopes, sound absorption coefficient of materials used for the construction of the envelopes, geometry of rooms or the distribution of sound absorbing materials. The arrangement of sound absorbing materials in rooms has an impact on the dispersion of acoustic field, yet theoretical calculation models do not take into account this impact. According to these models, regardless of the arrangement of sound absorbing materials, the reverberation time in a room will remain unchanged. The present paper investigates the above problem by means of computer simulations. For the needs of the simulation, three rooms with different dimensions were adopted, i.e. type 'p' - a cuboidal room with a square base, type 'd' - a cuboidal room (with one side of the 'p' room lengthened), type 'w' - a cuboidal room (with the height of the room lengthened 'p'). During the simulation, the way of acoustic field dispersion was being changed and its influence on the reverberation time in the rooms was being determined. The authors investigated two situations. The first one involved a non-dampened room, in which the sound absorbing material was being arranged differently. The second one involved a welldampened room, and the dispersion of sound field was analyzed depending on the location of the reflecting material