Mai-Britt Beldam
Room acoustics have been a big part of my life and working first with room acoustics in education facilities in Denmark and then healthcare facilities globally has taught me one important thing: We are not there yet.
What does long reverberation time sound like?
In a lot of hospitals and healthcare buildings all over the world room acoustics are challenged.
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Acoustic design engineer Thea Mathilde Larsen recently did a project on hospital acoustics where she mapped down what hospitals actually sound like.
Hospital standards according to the Danish building regulation (BR18)
In short the project revealed that very few of the hospitals’ wards lived up to the acoustics demands in the Danish building regulation (BR18) – that includes only a number of recommended design values.
BR18(15) divides hospital rooms into two categories:
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patient bedroom
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examination/treatment room
The regulation recommends a design value for the reverberation time of 0.6 s for both room types in the frequency range of 125-4000 Hz (with a liberation of 20 % for 125 Hz).
What does it sound like when a room doesn’t live up to the acoustic demands?
Results of the reverberation time made in the hospital
On the reverberation time curves you can see some of the rooms investigated. If you wonder what the curve the film represents, it is R.TR – the curve that shows the longest reverberation time. Unfortunately, the graph also shows that all the rooms evaluated here don’t fulfil the acoustic demands for hospital rooms.
It would be interesting – maybe even necessary – to evaluate more acoustic descriptors than just reverberation time in healthcare facilities to secure both a healthy working environment – but also an environment where it is possible for the patients to feel a calm atmosphere where recovery is possible.
Want to know more?
If you want to know more about me and about the project, see my profile and contact information below.