Architecture and Building Acoustics

Transmission suite — Salford’s reverberation chamber used for testing architectural elements.

We spend about 90% of our time indoors, and consequently the acoustic quality of buildings is vital to well-being. Our research looks at all different building types: theatres, recording studios, schools [1], homes, open plan offices etc. This includes work on archaeoacoustics, the sound of prehistoric spaces such as Stonehenge [2]. Our research:

Reduces noise indoors to improve quality of life.
Improves speech intelligibility of announcements to improve accessibility.
Develops absorbing and diffusing treatments for rooms.
Develops new approaches for measuring and predicting how sound moves within rooms and buildings.
Furthers understanding of how people respond to sound indoors.
Creates new measurement methods that then get incorporated into international standards (e.g. BS ISO 17497-2:2012; ISO 140-18: 2006 and BS EN 15657-1:2009)

We are also a test house for building acoustics and hold UKAS accreditation for many standard methods.

Current and future research focus includes:

Modern Methods of Construction
Advancing measurement and simulation methods to build Digital Twins
Addressing consequences of net-zero e.g. air source heat pump noise
Sustainable metasurfaces and metamaterials for architecture

Contact

Professor Trevor Cox at t.j.cox@salford.ac.uk.

References

[1] Shield, B., Conetta, R., Dockrell, J., Connolly, D., Cox, T. and Mydlarz, C., 2015. A survey of acoustic conditions and noise levels in secondary school classrooms in England. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 137(1), pp.177-188.

[2] Cox, T.J., Fazenda, B.M. and Greaney, S.E., 2020. Using scale modelling to assess the prehistoric acoustics of Stonehenge. Journal of Archaeological Science, 122, p.105218.