• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.28 no.2E
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• pp.60-65
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• 2009

The present study aims to investigate the effects of sound diffusers and absorbers on the sound clarity in classrooms. In order to do this, computer simulations were carried out to find the effective area of treatment which could enhance the sound clarity in the room. Acoustic measurements were undertaken in a lecture room with several conditions changing the surface of walls and ceilings with diffusers and absorbers. Diffusion and absorption treatments were applied to the side walls, rear wall and the ceiling of the classroom. SPL, RT, D50, RASTI were measured at 9 measurement points with one sound source and MLS was used as the sound source signal. The results show that higher sound clarity was obtained when diffusers were applied to rear walls and ceiling rather than side walls. Also, it was confirmed that absorption increased sound clarity more effectively with smaller amount in comparison with diffusers. It was also concluded that the effects of sound diffusers and absorbers on the sound clarity could be obtained distinctly at the rear area of the classroom.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Educational Facilities
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.37-44
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• 2013

The present study examines the effects of periodic type diffusers for producing the preferred acoustics for speech and determines the more successful configurations of sound-absorbing and diffusing treatments for achieving good acoustics in classrooms. The measurements were carried out in a 1/10 scale model classroom systematically adding diffusers to one or more of four surfaces of the room. A total of 13 combination of diffusers with absorptive treatments were investigated. Adding diffusers on the ceiling were more effective to increasing the early-arriving reflection energy($G_{50}$) than adding absorptive materials on the entire ceiling. The late arriving reflection energy($G_{late}$) was decreased with increasing amounts of diffusing treatments of upper front or rear wall and this resulted in achieving higher early-to-late ratios($G_{50}$). Adding diffusers on the upper front wall($AC_{100}DUFW_{26}$) achieved more uniform acoustical conditions over the receiver positions than adding diffusers on the upper rear wall($AC_{100}DUFW_{26}$). Adding diffusers on the ceiling and absorptive materials on the lower front wall($AC_{75}DC_{25}ALFW_{26}$) achieved better acoustical conditions than adding the absorptive materials on the entire ceiling and lower front wall($AC_{100}ALFW_{26}$).

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.1194-1197
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• 2006

Recently, international standard for measurement of sound absorption in a reverberation room has been amended. In the revised version, temperature, humidity and air pressure conditions are strictly restricted and also the concrete procedures are presented to reduce the differences in test results by adding inspection of diffusion, measurement uncertainty etc. In this paper, the systematic tests are conducted based on the inspection guide of diffusion defined by ISO 354 and the effects of diffusers on the measurement of sound absorption ratio are considered. As a result, we perceived that the averaged sound absorption ratio in mid and high frequency range is expected to measure around $0.05{\sim}0.1$ higher in high sound absorption material. Therefore, as for the reverberation room for measurement of sound absorption, we need to take into consideration not only the spatial standard deviation of sound pressure mandated by ISO 3741, but also, inspection regulation of diffusion showed by ISO 354.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2008.04a
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• pp.21-24
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• 2008

This study proposes a optimized shape of diffuser profile through investigating the scattering and diffusion characteristics of diffusers. The scattering coefficient according to ISO 17497-1 evaluates uniformity of reverberant sound field of late reflections, while the diffusion coefficient according to AES-4id-2001 evaluates polar response of early reflections. Thus both scattering and diffusion characteristics should contribute to design shape of diffusers to maximize physical performance. To find out design method, the previous results on hemisphere diffusers are reviewed. The frequency characteristics of scattering coefficients depended on the structural height of the diffusers, while amount of scattering coefficients depended on the surface coverage density of the diffusers. However absorptive properties also increased with augment of surface coverage density, thus optimum coverage density should be considered. For the directional diffuser, three types of 2D-diffusers are proposed; semicylinder of h=5mm, semi-truncated cone of h=5-25mm and semicylinder of h=25mm. As results, diffusers with the maximum height of 25mm show the highest scattering coefficients, while diffuser of h=5mm shows high scattering coefficients only at the high-frequency bands. Diffusion coefficient will be investigated for diffusive properties of the early reflection.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.23 no.11
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• pp.973-981
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• 2013

The main role of an acoustic diffuser is to diffuse reflected sound field spatially. Since the pioneering work of Schroeder, there have been investigations to improve its performance by using shape/sizing optimization methods. In this paper, a gradient-based topology optimization algorithm is newly presented to find the optimal distribution of reflecting materials for maximizing diffuser performance. Time-harmonic acoustic analysis in a two-dimensional acoustic domain is carried out where the domain is discretized by finite elements. Perfectly matched layers are placed to surround the domain to simulate non-reflecting boundary conditions. Design variables are assigned to each element of which material properties are interpolated between those of air and those of a rigid body. An approach to extract the reflected field from the total acoustic field is employed. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, design problems are solved at different frequencies. The performance of the optimized diffusers obtained by the proposed method is compared against that of the conventional Schroeder diffusers.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.1376-1378
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• 2006

Numerical and experimental study were carried out to characterize sound fields of low frequency in a scaled reverberation chamber for measurement of sound insulation of panels. By using BEM, lower modes of the chamber are identified and then predicted the effect of diffusers in order to destruct lower modes. Compared results with measurements show reasonable agreements, especially at the first end second modes. Based on numerical prediction, the diffuser are installed in order to improve sound fields to be more diffuse than ever. It is found that the diffuser put in nodal line of the chamber destruct evidently the first mode. Consequently, the measuring error at the low frequency can be relatively reduced compare to the case of without diffuser.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2008.04a
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• pp.25-28
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• 2008

This study investigates the effect of geometrical shape of concert halls, with variation in the shape and location of diffusers. The acoustical characteristics both in the audience area and on the stage 1:50 scale models of shoebox and fan-shaped halls. It was found that the front side walls affect sound diffusion. The 1:50 scale model based on the Boston Symphony Hall was used for monaural impulse response measurements for calculation of RT, EDT, C80, G and ST1. In addition, calculating the numbers and amplitudes of reflection rays were applied to quantify diffusion phenomena.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.939-942
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• 2007

Vacuum cleaner is a close life product that can remove various dusts from our surroundings. However well vacuum cleaner clean our environments, many people are looking away from it, due to its loud noise. Its noise causes a big trouble in the usual life, for example, catch calls, TV watching and discussing etc. To reduce these inconveniences, noise reduction methods and systematic design of low noise vacuum cleaner are studied in this paper. At first, sound quality investigation is performed to get the noise level and quality that make people TV watching and catch calls available. Based on the European and domestic customer SQ survey result, sound power, peak noise level and target sound spectrum guideline are studied and introduced. As a second, precise product sound spectrums are designed into each part based on the sound quality result. Fan-motor, brush, mainbody, cyclone spectrums are decided to get the final target sound based on the contribution level. Fan-motor is the major noise source of vacuum cleaner. Specially, its peak sound, RPM peak and BPF Peak, cause the people nervous. To reduce these peak sounds, high rotating impeller and diffuser are focused due to its interaction. A lot of experimental and numerical tests, operation points are investigated and optimization of flow path area between diffusers is performed. As a bagless device, cyclones are one of the major noise sources of vacuum cleaner. To reduce its noise, previous research is used and adopted well. Brush is the most difficult part to reduce noise. Its noise sources are all comes from aero-acoustic phenomena. Numerical analysis helps the understanding of flow structure and pattern, and a lot of experimental test are performed to reduce the noise. Gaps between the carpet and brush are optimized and flow paths are re-designed to lower the noise. Reduction is performed with keeping the cleaning efficiency and handling power together and much reduction of noise is acquired. With all above parts, main-body design is studied. To do a systematic design, configuration design developments technique is introduced from airplane design and evolved with each component design. As a first configuration, fan-motor installation position is investigated and 10 configuration ideas are developed and tested. As a second step, reduced size and compressed configuration candidates are tested and evaluated by a lot of major factor. Noise, power, mass production availability, size, flow path are evaluated together. If noise reduction configuration results in other performance degrade, the noise reduction configuration is ineffective. As a third configuration, cyclones are introduced and the size is reduced one more time and fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh configuration are evolved with size and design image with noise and other performance indexes. Finally we can get a overall much noise level reduction configuration. All above investigations are adopted into vacuum cleaner design and final customer satisfaction tests in Europe are performed. 1st grade sound quality and lowest noise level of bagless vacuum cleaner are achieved.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.146-156
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• 2015

This study investigated how the location of sound absorptive materials and sound diffusers affects the acoustic performance of small auditoriums. It was conducted for a standard model established with the averaged dimension of 36 auditoriums which had opened since 2000 in Daehak-ro, Seoul. In this study, the installation area of finishing materials was calculated upon a back wall which had the smallest installation effective area of finishing materials. To analyze the changes of acoustic performance according to installation location of finishing materials, experiments were carried out using the 1/10 down scale models for 8 cases which were made by classifying the installation location of ceiling and side wall into the front, middle and rear part.The used acoustic parameters were reverberation time (RT), early decay time (EDT), clarity (C80), definition (D50) and speech transmission index (STI). In result, the index related to the amount of reverberant sound (RT, EDT) showed the great changes when evaluating it through just noticeable difference (JND), but the one related to clarity (C80, D50, STI) hardly indicated the changes. In case to obtain short reverberation time, it was most effective to control reverberation time through the side walls when installing sound absorptive and diffusive materials, and side wall front was the location which could get the shortest reverberation time.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.115-128
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• 2012

This paper investigates the effects of diffuser on the acoustical parameters in music hall with consideration of the result of scattering coefficient measurement. A scale model hall of 600 seats with orchestra shell was used for experiments. The materials of 1:50 scale model was chosen through absorption coefficient measurement based on ISO 354. The model was matched to the computer simulation model in terms of reverberation time. In order to evaluate the effect of diffuser location, the measurements were accomplished with and without diffusers according to 7 configurations by diffuser-installed region; sidewall, balcony front, ceiling and so on. The following acoustical parameters were extracted from each measurement case; Reverberation time (RT), Early decay time (EDT), Clarity (C80), Center time (Ts), Sound strength (G) and Temporal diffusion (TD) from the auto-correlation function (ACF) of impulse responses. As a result, the absorption power and diffusion power were increased with number of diffusers. Accordingly RT, EDT and G were decreased by diffuser and the redirection of reflections was occurred briskly. Averaged TD was 6.05 to 6.30 by measurement cases. RT was found to be the most related factor to diffusion power (R = 0.94). The correlation between TD and EDT was high (R = 0.73). In addition, the effects of diffuser-installed location were discussed in terms of acoustical parameter variation.