Importance of Including the Acoustic Medium in Rooms on the Transmission Path between Source and Receiver Rooms within a Building

Low-frequency noise is a potential nuisance to inhabitants in lightweight building structures. Hence, development of efficient and accurat methods for prediction of noice in such buildings is important. The aim of this paper is to assess the necessity of including the acoustic medium in rooms along the transmission path from one room to another. For this purpose, analyses are carried out in frequency domain by a finite-element model, employing a fully couples model of sound waves within an acoustic medium and vibrations in a building structure. Focus is on modelling the room between the source and receiver rooms. A model including the acoustic medium in the middle room is compared to a model with no air in the room, and different transmissions paths for flanking niose (walls and floors) are studied. The study concerns the frequency range 50-250 Hz