ACOUSTICS AND NOISE CONTROL

INTRODUCTION TO SOUND

BUILDING SERVICES – IV DSCA 30th August 2023 Bangalore Prof.Dominic Harper

OBJECTIVE --------------- • Introduction to the study of acoustics

• Nature of sound, characteristic and measurement

• Basic terminology
– amplitude, frequency, period, wavelength, velocity, pitch, tone, sound pressure,
sound intensity, decibel scale, loudness, threshold of audibility and pain, phon,
masking, sound and distance – inverse square law, human hearing, auditory range.

• Absorption of sound, Echoes, focusing of sound, dead spots, flutter echo. sound
absorption coefficient, Room resonances, reverberation, reverberation time
calculation, use of Sabine’s and Eyring’s formulae. Effect of RT on speech and music.

• Reflection of sound, nature of reflection from plane, convex and concave surfaces,
sound diffraction
ACOUSTICS
Introduction ----------------- SOUND STATE ? ...... SOLID ? LIQUID ? GAS ? CHEMICAL ? LIGHT ?
“ A wave motion in air or other elastic media (stimulus) or as that excitation of the
hearing mechanism that results in the perception of sound (sensation).”

Sound is a kind of energy created when something vibrates. When this vibration
reaches an ear, it is translated into what we recognize as a sound

Objective / Physical Definition Subjective / Physiological Definition

Sound is a form of energy. Sound is an auditory sensation produced
It travels in waves through elastic by stimulation of the organ of hearing,
media and causes fluctuation of evoked by physical fluctuation of
pressure and particle displacement. pressure in media.

Study of sound in relation to people, both aspects of sound have to be treated

Drum/ Instrument Alarm clock Loud speaker

ACOUSTICS
SOUND Objective / Physical Definition Subjective / Physiological Definition
Sound is a form of energy. It travels in waves Sound is an auditory sensation produced by
through elastic media and causes fluctuation stimulation of the organ of hearing, evoked by
of pressure and particle displacement. physical fluctuation of pressure in media.

If you bang a drum, you make the tight skin vibrate at very high speed (it's so fast that you can't
usually see it), forcing the air all around it to vibrate as well. As the air moves, it carries energy out
from the drum in all directions. Eventually, even the air inside your ears starts vibrating—and that's
when you begin to perceive the vibrating drum as a sound.
physical process that produces sound energy psychological process that happens inside our ears
to start with and sends it shooting through the and brains, which convert the incoming sound
air energy into sensations we interpret as noises,
speech, and music.

physical process : the interest

is in the disturbance in air
created by a loudspeaker, it is
a problem in physics
psychological process : If the
interest is how it sounds to a
person near the loudspeaker,

Sound vibration must travel

through matter. This is
typically air/water
 SPACE

A vacuum is an area without any air, like space. So sound cannot travel through space because there is no matter for the vibrations to work in.

Can you hear sounds in space? Now you’ve probably heard that there’s no sound in space
but technically that’s not true

Now yes, space is a virtual vacuum. However, sound does exist in the form of electromagnetic vibrations
that pulsate in similar wavelengths.

What NASA did was design special instruments that could record these electromagnetic vibrations, and
transferred them into sounds that our ears could hear
ACOUSTICS
Definition -------------------- “Acoustics” is derived from the Greek word ἀκουστικός (akoustikos),
meaning “of or for hearing, ready to hear”
• It is a branch of physics that deals with study of all kinds of mechanical
waves in any medium

• It was Aristotle who first established the relation that anything that
vibrates can produce sound dates back to (384–322 BC)

• Architectural acoustics recognised as a science just over a century.

ARCHITECTURAL ACOUSTICS • The scientific knowhow to achieve a good sound within a space (building)

• Involves the study of speech intelligibility, speech privacy, music quality,

noise control and vibration reduction with in the built environment.

Acoustics is a branch of physics that study the sound, acoustics concerned with
the production, control, transmission, reception, and effects of sound.

The study of acoustics has been fundamental to many developments in the arts,
science, technology, music, biology, etc

“A science that deals with the production, control, transmission, reception, and
effects of sound.”
ACOUSTICS
Study sound as a wave

Categorized as a line diagram , Reflection/ Refraction / Absorption of the

sound is translated as a Ray . More important for architects

In this domain , we study the various frequencies of pressure( level of

sound intensity) .To design for a certain intensity of sound in a room, this
statistical data gives a scale for various materials that could be used
ACOUSTICS

DIVISION OF ACOUSTICS

•Aero acoustics
•Psycho acoustics
•Transduction

•Architectural acoustics
•Physiological acoustics
•Musical acoustics

•Bio acoustics
•Physical acoustics
•Underwater acoustics
•Biomedical acoustics

•Speech communication
•Non-liner acoustics
•Environmental noise
•Structural acoustics
SOUND
Types of Wave Motion

Longitudinal Wave
In a Longitudinal Wave the particle
displacement is parallel to the
direction of wave propagation

• Motion of a Spring
• Sound Wave
• P-Wave

Transverse Wave
In a Transverse Wave the particle
displacement is perpendicular to the
direction of wave propagation

• Motion of a String
• Water Ripples
• S-Wave
• Electromagnetic Wave
 SOUND
Particle motion
Linear medium

The back and forth motion of the particle is shown above.

in other medium
If a stone is dropped on a calm water
surface, concentric waves travel out
from the point of impact, and the
water particles trace circular orbits (for
deep water, at least)

The tiny elements of the string move

transversely, or at right angles to the
direction of travel of the waves along
the string.

For sound travelling in a gaseous

medium such as air, the particles move
in the direction the sound is travelling.
These are called longitudinal waves,
SOUND
Amplitude
The maximum extent of a vibration or
oscillation in a propagating wave
motion, measured from the position of
equilibrium is called Amplitude

Peak - Amplitude
The extent of a vibration between the
Crest to the position of equilibrium in
a propagating wave motion is called
Peak-Amplitude [1]
Peak – to – Peak - Amplitude
The extent of a vibration between
the Crest to Trough in a propagating
wave motion is called Peak-to-Peak
Amplitude [2]

Root-mean-Square Amplitude
The square root of the squared
average values of the waveform is
called Root-mean-Square Amplitude
[3]
In the case of the sine wave, the RMS
value is 0.707 times the peak value
 SOUND
Sine wave Language
The sine wave is a specific kind of alternating
signal and is described by its own set of specific
terms. Viewed on an oscilloscope, the easiest
value to read is the peak-to-peak value (of
voltage, current, sound pressure, or whatever
the sine wave represents), the meaning of
which is obvious as shown in the figures below.
If the wave is symmetrical, the peak-to-peak
value is twice the peak value.

Complex Sound Waves The variation in

pressure caused by speech, music or noise as
shown below. Most sounds are complex,
consisting of a variety of pressures which vary
with time. The threshold of hearing for humans
is one millionth of normal atmospheric
pressure.
Time Period
The time needed for one complete
cycle of vibration to pass a given point
is called Time Period.

Frequency
Frequency describes the number of
complete wave cycle that pass a fixed
point in unit time.
Usually frequency is measured in
cycles per second (CPS ) or hertz unit,
named in honour of the 19th-century
German physicist Heinrich Rudolf
Hertz
Wave length

The distance between two successive

crests or troughs, or the distance of a
complete cycle of a wave propagation
of in the direction of wave motion is
called Wavelength

Sound wave : Frequency & Wave length

wavelength (ft) x frequency (Hz) = speed of sound

λ X f = 1130
Variation of Frequency , Amplitude and Wave length

Nomogram of Frequency & Wave Length

Sound Wave Propagation in Air
Displacement vs Directivity diagram

This compression and Rarefaction synchronises

the movement of sound in the air
Tuning fork
Speed of Sound
Velocity of Sound in Air (c) is depend upon:
•Atmospheric Pressure (p)
•Density of Air (ρ)
•Temperature of Air (ta)

The speed of sound in air at room temperature is

340 m/s
Sound Pressure
Sound travels in an elastic medium such as air, water , earth etc. an elastic medium returns
to its normal state once a force is removed.

Pressure is a force per unit area. Sound energy progresses rapidly, producing extremely
small changes in atmospheric pressure, and travel great distances.

“The fluctuation in the atmospheric pressure caused by the vibration of air

particles due to a sound wave is called Sound Pressure.”

Pitch
“ The attribute of an auditory sensation which enables us to order sounds on
a scale extending from low to high is called pitch”
It is a quality that makes it possible to judge sounds as "higher" and "lower" in the sense
associated with musical melodies

• Pitch is the subjective response of human hearing to frequency.

• It is the subjective physiological equivalent of frequency.
• The pitch depends primarily upon the frequency of the sound stimulus
• Low frequencies generally are considered "bloomy"
• High frequencies generally are considered "screechy" or "hissy"
Tone • A sound sensation having pitch is called tone.

• Pure tone (or simple tone) – Single Frequency is a sound sensation of a single frequency
characterized, therefore, by its singleness of pitch, e.g., that produced by striking a tuning
fork, vibration of string of a guitar

• Complex Tone (More than one frequency) is a sound sensation characterized by more than
one pitch, e.g., that produced on musical instruments., Speech , Road side noise

• Whether or not a person hears a tone as simple or complex depends on ability, experience
and listening attitude.

Sound Intensity • Sound intensity also known as acoustic intensity is defined as the Energy
carried by the sound waves per unit area.

• The unit of sound intensity is watt per square meter (W/m2).

• The rate at which sound energy passes through a unit area held perpendicular to the
direction of propagation of sound waves is called intensity of sound

Sound intensity, denoted I, is defined by

Sound Intensity (I) = Sound Pressure (p) X Particle Velocity (v)
Both I and v are vectors, which means that both have a direction as well as a magnitude.
The direction of sound intensity is the average direction in which energy is flowing.
The average sound intensity during a time T is given by,
(I) = 1/T
Loudness • Loudness is the characteristic of a sound that is primarily a psycho-physiological correlate
of physical strength (amplitude).
• It is defined as "that attribute of auditory sensation in terms of
which sounds can be ordered on a scale extending from quiet to
loud".
It also shows that humans with normal hearing are most sensitive to sounds around 2–
4 kHz.

Phon Unit of measurement of loudness

Human hearing and Speech

• Humans are generally capable of hearing sounds between 20 Hz and 20 kHz.

• Sounds with frequencies above the range of human hearing are called ultrasound.

• Sounds with frequencies below the range of human hearing are called infrasound.

• Typical sounds produced by human speech have frequencies on the order of 100 - 1,000 Hz

•The peak sensitivity of human hearing is around 4000 Hz.

Decibel Scale
L1 = 10 log l/l0
where, L1= Sound Intensity Level (in dB)
l = Sound Intensity (in W/ m2)
l0= Reference Sound Intensity 10-12 (in W/m2)
Threshold of Audibility and pain
• The level above which sound intensity, at any
specified frequency, must rise in order to be detected by
the average human ear is Threshold of Audibility.

• This threshold value decreases with increasing frequency from a

value of about 1microwatt m-2 at 50Hz to slightly less than 10-
6microwatts m-2 at about 2000Hz,

and then increases with increasing frequency to about

104microwatt m-2 near 30000Hz.

As the sound intensity rises above the threshold of audibility at any frequency, continued increase will
finally raise the intensity to a second type of limit, the threshold of pain (threshold of discomfort,
threshold of feeling).

This threshold is rather insensitive to frequency, being found at about 106microwatts m-2 for nearly all frequencies in the
audible range. It represents the limit above which appreciable increase in sound intensity will lead to sensible pain in the average
human ear. Thresholds of hearing for male (M) and female (W) subjects between the ages of 20 and 60
Sound shadow • A phenomenon caused by the absorption or obstruction of a sound wave by
an object in its path.

• The effect produced is perceived as a reduction in loudness depending on the observer's

position with respect to the sound source and obstructing object and is greatest when the
three are aligned.

Source -------- Obstructing Object -------- Observer/ Reciever

Sound masking • Sound masking is the addition of natural or artificial sound (such as white
noise or pink noise) into an environment to cover up unwanted sound by
using auditory masking.

• This is in contrast to the technique of active noise control.

• Sound masking reduces or eliminates awareness of pre-existing sounds in a given area and
can make a work environment more comfortable, while creating speech privacy so workers
can better concentrate and be more productive.

• Sound masking can also be used in the outdoors to restore a more natural ambient
environment.

• Covering a distracting sound with a more soothing or less intrusive sound.

• Masking sound should be bland and
steady so that it will not be noticed.

• Effective background masking may be

provided by airflow that is carefully
controlled at diffusers and registers.

• The transmitted noise level should be

below the normal background noise level
(called ambient sound) in the receiving
room.
Sound and Distance - Inverse square law • Sound waves from a point source outdoors with no obstruction (called
free-field conditions) are virtually spherical and expand outward from the
source.

• In Physics an inverse square law is - any physical law stating that

a specified physical quantity or intensity is inversely proportion
to square of the distance from source of physical quantity.

• Power is a basic quantity of energy flow.

•The intensity from a point source outdoors at a distance d away is the
sound power of the source divided by the total spherical area 4 d2 of the
sound wave at the distance of interest. This relationship can be expressed as

where, l = sound intensity (W/m2)

d = distance from sound source (m)
Human Hearing and Auditory Range
The Science and Engineering of Sound – first half of the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbUTyMC8_X8

Understanding Sound Pressure Level (SPL) and the Decibel Scale (dB)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q-6jqh2Qdc

Near total silence - 0 dB

A whisper - 15 dB
Normal conversation - 60 dB
A lawnmower - 90 dB
A car horn - 110 dB
A rock concert or a jet engine - 120 dB
A gunshot or firecracker - 140 dB
 Thank you
for listening