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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, homes, open plan offices etc. Our research:

  • Reduces noise indoors to improve quality of life.
  • Improves speech intelligibility of announcements to improve accessibility.
  • Researches and develops absorbing and diffusing treatments for rooms.
  • Creates new approaches for measuring and predicting how sound moves within rooms and buildings.
  • Develops understanding of how people respond to sound, to inform high-quality architectural design.
  • Creates new measurement methods 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 acoustic elements and hold UKAS accreditation for many standard test methods.

Current and future research focus includes:

  • Modern Methods of Construction
  • Building ‘Digital Twins’
  • Metasurfaces and metamaterials for architecture

Archive of old projects

Acoustic treatments and elements

  • Acoustic diffusers for performance spaces
  • Absorption of theatre seating (EPSRC GR/F05251/01)
  • Turning Schroeder diffusers into room acoustic absorbers

Predicting sounds in rooms

  • Time domain boundary element models
  • Enhanced Acoustic Modelling for Auralisation using Hybrid Boundary Integral Methods (EPSRC EP/J022071/1)
  • Adaptive beam tracing for room acoustic modelling
  • Scattering coefficients for geometric room acoustic models
  • Sound insulation for lightweight profiled metal cladding systems (EPSRC GR/H77088/01)
  • Boundary Element Methods in the frequency domain (summarised in Acoustic Absorbers and Diffuser)

Design of the acoustics of spaces

  • Acoustics of Stonehenge
  • Acoustic design of secondary schools
  • Room sizing for studios

Measurement in architectural acoustics

  • Measurement of rooms using naturalistic signals
  • Diffusion and scattering coefficients for room surfaces (incorporated into BS ISO 17497-2:2012)
  • Measurement of rain noise (incorporated into ISO 140-18: 2006)
  • Characterising sources of structure-borne sound (incorporated into BS EN 15657-1:2009)

Perception of sound in rooms

  • Low frequencies in small critical listening spaces
  • Perception of reverberation time in small listening rooms
  • Subjective perception of seat dip attenuation
  • The sensitivity of listeners to early sound field changes in auditoriums

General contact: Architectural and Building Acoustics

Please contact Trevor Cox at t.j.cox@salford.ac.uk.

Contact Us

Head of Acoustics Research
Prof Trevor Cox
t.j.cox@salford.ac.uk
Tel: (0044) 0161 295 5474

Links

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Research at the University of Salford

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