Modeling and Designing Acoustical Conditions of the Interior – Case Study

The primary aim of this research study was to model acoustic conditions of the Courtyard of the Gdańsk University of Technology Main Building, and then to design a sound reinforcement system for this interior. First, results of measurements of the parameters of the acoustic field are presented. Then, the comparison between measured and predicted values using the ODEON program is shown. Collected data indicate a long reverberation time which results in poor speech intelligibility. Then, a thorough analysis is perform to improve the acoustic properties of the model of the interior investigated. On the basis of the improved acoustic model two options of a sound reinforcement system for this interior are proposed, and then analyzed. After applying sound absorbing material it was noted that the predicted speech intelligibility increased from bad/poor rating to good category