Acoustic modelling of sports halls, two case studies

Abstract

To achieve a preferable sound field in traditionally shoebox-shaped sports halls, the sound absorbing material is often applied in the upper part of the hall. The applicability of predicting the acoustics of sports halls by three different acoustic calculation methods is investigated: a diffuse field method, a geometrical acoustics method and a full wave-based method. The predicted reverberation time and sound pressure level are compared to measured data for two sports halls in the low frequency range up to the 630 Hz ⅓ octave band. From the three methods, results from the wave-based method agree best with the measured results. Results indicate the importance of the chosen material properties in the prediction methods used. Sound pressure levels resulting from the diffuse field method are comparable with results from the other prediction methods, but the reverberation time prediction is not reliable using this method.

Keywords:

• reverberation time
• sound pressure level
• geometrical acoustics method
• wave-based acoustics method
• diffuse field method
• pseudospectral time-domain method

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Niels Vertegaal for his contribution to both the description of the sports halls and the IR measurements and Nicole van Hout for her contribution to the IR measurements. Also, the authors are grateful to Bengt-Inge Dalenbäck for his valuable comments and to John D. Bynum for proofreading the manuscript.