Misunderstandings about airborne sound insulation quality estimated in-situ with different descriptors

Abstract

In order to achieve protection against noise from adjoining dwellings certain requirements should be fulfilled concerning the airborne sound insulation. Today in European countries for describing the airborne sound insulation properties of partitions between dwellings various descriptors are applying. In legal requirements for airborne sound insulation there are mainly two approaches: to use weighted apparent sound reduction index R'w or weighted standardized level difference DnT,w. When sound insulation requirements are based on the actual performance of building constructions, the chosen descriptor and in situ available rooms’ dimensions can influence the differences in estimated sound insulation values for the same acoustic quality partitions in dwelling. The objective of this paper is in deep investigate differences between R'w and DnT,w. descriptors values, obtained by in situ measurements on the same partition in different size living rooms. Misunderstandings about estimated acoustic quality of building with different indexes allows think about preferable use of DnTw descriptor. In practical applications DnTW descriptor is more convenient too, because simplify measurements executable without calculations the common partition area between two adjacent rooms.