Revised Criteria for Noise in Buildings
About: This article is published in Noise Control.The article was published on 1957-01-01. It has received 76 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Noise.
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01 Sep 2000
TL;DR: The evolution of methods for evaluating noise and for evaluating the interference of noise with speech has paralleled the development of electronic sound measurement instrumentation, and three are in current use by engineers involved with the design of building mechanical systems.
Abstract: Gregory C. Tocci is president of Cavanaugh Tocci Associates, Inc., an acoustical consulting firm founded in 1975 with his partner, William J. Cavanaugh. He received a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Tufts University in 1970 and an M.S. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973. He is a registered professional engineer in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the State of Rhode Island. His professional career in acoustics began as a staff consultant with Cambridge Collaborative, Inc. in 1973, working on rail transportation, machine noise control, and architectural acoustics problems. In 1974 he joined Cavanaugh Copley Associates and there worked on a variety of highway and rail environmental impact statements as well as architectural acoustics problems. He is a former chairman of the Greater Boston Chapter of the Acoustical Society of America, a past president of the National Council of Acoustical Consultants, and a member of their long-range planning committee. He is a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), a member of its Membership Committee, and is a past member of the ASA Technical Committee on Noise. He currently serves as the Noise Control Engineering Journal associate editor for building noise control. He has also served INCE/USA as a director and as vice president for board certification. He is currently the president of INCE/USA. He has held adjunct teaching positions at both the New England School of Art and Design and the Harvard School of Public Health. He has lectured widely on a variety of topics in architectural acoustics to industrial and professional groups. In 2000, Mr. Tocci was given the Tufts University Mechanical Engineering Department Career Achievement Award. He is the author of the Solutia Acoustical Glazing Design Guide and several articles in professional magazines. Introduction Rating of noise in building spaces has a long history. To some extent, advances in methods for evaluating sound in buildings has paralleled the development of electronic sound measurement instrumentation. The first step in this evolution was simply to devise instruments that could repeatably measure sound. No sooner was this possible than electronic instrumentation advanced, further enabling the measurement of sound in frequency bands. The frequency discrimination of octave band sound measurements paved the way for advances in understanding the impact of noise on communication and hearing. Though the ability to measure sound in frequency bands was a remarkable advance, it complicated the evaluation of the impact of noise on speech communication. However, researchers recognized an opportunity to combine methods for evaluating hearing acuity with methods for measuring background sound over the audible frequency range in order to developed single-number ratings for noise, particularly as it relates to speech interference. The first section of this paper briefly summarizes the evolution of methods for evaluating noise and for evaluating the interference of noise with speech. Of the evolving methods for evaluating sound in rooms, three are in current use by engineers involved with the design of building mechanical systems. All three methods involve the use of sets of curves explained in this paper. These are Noise Criteria (NC) curves, Balanced Noise Criteria (NCB) curves, and Room Criteria (RC) curves. In addition, a fourth method called RC Mark II (Blazier, 1997) uses curves nearly identical to RC curves, but includes a different method for ascribing spectrum quality. Finally, a fifth set of curves, called RCN curves, recently published in the Noise Control Engineering Journal (Schomer, 2000), attempts to address cyclic variation of low frequency sound produced by large air ventilation systems—sometimes described as “surging.” As we enter the 21st century, it is clear that the acoustical consulting profession will continue to de-
21 citations
01 Jan 2005
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the relationship between indoor noise criteria and subjective perception of loudness and annoyance and found that RC and RC-Mark II were the most correlated with level perception, although NC, NCB and LAeq were also strongly correlated.
Abstract: A number of indoor noise criteria systems are used to quantifj; the background noise in a built environment, including Noise Criteria (NC), Balanced Noise Criteria (NCB), Room Criteria (RC), Room Criteria Mark II (RC Mark II), Aweighted Equivalent Sound Pressure Level (L Acq)' and others. An ongoing debate exists in the acoustical community over which criterion is the most appropriate to use in the variety of ambient noise situations encountered. In an effort to quantitatively support the use of an individual criterion, this project subjectively correlates these various criteria with human task performance and perception. Eleven subjects participated in a pilot study by completing ~)ping and proofreading tasks, as well as subjective ratings of loud ness, annoyance, and spectral quality. Results show that there were no significant differences in productivity scores among the 12 noise exposures tested; howevel; significant relationships were found between indoor noise criteria predictions of level and subjective perception of loudness and annoyance. In this study, RC and RC-Mark II were found to be the most correlated with level perception, although NC, NCB, and LAeq were also strongly correlated. Additionally, interesting relationships were found between subjective perceptions o.frumble or roar and criteria predictions of such. The authors are in the process of extending the pilot study to more subjects, as well as examining the effects of tonal and fluctuating background noise spectra on criteria predictions.
20 citations
Cites methods from "Revised Criteria for Noise in Build..."
...The Noise Criteria method was one of the earliest to be widely accepted (Beranek 1957)....
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TL;DR: In this paper, the development of a scale model technique for the study of the sound field in landscaped offices is described, and results of pilot studies are given, and comparisons made with measurements in a full-size office, and with calculations based on a simple theoretical model.
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01 Jan 2010
TL;DR: In this paper, the effects of noise from building mechanical systems with tonal components on human task performance and perception were investigated, and it was found that higher annoyance/distraction responses were significantly correlated with reduced typing task performance.
Abstract: This study investigated the effects of noise from building mechanical systems with tonal components on human task performance and perception. Six different noise conditions based on in-situ measurements were reproduced in an officelike setting; all were set to approximately the same sound level (47 dBA) but could have one particular tonal frequency (120 Hz, 235 Hz, or 595 Hz) at one of two tonal prominence ratios (5 or 9). Thirty participants were asked to complete typing, grammatical reasoning, and math tasks plus subjective questionnaires, while being exposed for approximately 1 hour to each noise condition. Results show that the noise conditions that had tonal prominence ratios of 9 were generally perceived to be more annoying than those of 5, although statistically significant differences in task performance were not found. Other findings are (1) that higher annoyance/distraction responses were significantly correlated with reduced typing task performance; (2) that the noise characteristics most closely correlated to higher annoyance/distraction responses in this study were higher ratings of loudness followed by roar, rumble, and tones; and (3) that perception of more low frequency rumble in particular was significantly linked to reduced performance on both the routine and cognitively demanding tasks.
12 citations