Acoustic research

In the collective project “Contract Research in Acoustics”, a wide variety of building material products and systems from different manufacturers, in particular prototypes, are acoustically characterized, optimized and their acoustic effect predicted in smaller projects.

2024 sub-project Earth-Straw-Construction: In buildings, airborne and impact sound travels from the transmitting room to the receiving room via several transmission paths. In order to design sound insulation sustainably, i.e. without wasting material, the influence of the individual sound transmission paths should be known. In massive construction, there are already standardized calculation methods for many building situations to ensure this. In timber and timber hybrid construction, there is still a lack of information for many construction situations. 

As part of this project, the flanking sound transmission of a new type of construction (walls made of timber studs with straw infill plastered with clay) was investigated. 

The main questions were: How does the flanking sound transmission differ compared to wall junctions made of common building materials, and how can the structure be optimized to minimize flanking sound transmission in a cost-effective and resource-effective way? 

In addition to the standardized airborne sound measurements, non-standardized airborne and structure-borne sound measurements were carried out in order to understand the vibration and radiation behaviour of these inhomogeneous flanking walls. 

In the end, an acoustically optimized connection variant between the separating and flanking walls could be implemented with a reduction of the weighted standard flanking level difference of 10 dB.