Experimental Study on Sound Insulation of Ventilation Partitions

Abstract

Plenum windows that ensure noise reduction and natural ventilation at the same time have been studied by many researchers. Without sacrificing the window transparency and ventilation, limited acoustical treatments could be implemented in the cavity between two glass panes to enhance noise reduction performance of plenum windows, and accordingly the sound insulation performance by plenum windows hits a bottleneck. Ventilation partition with a similar configuration to plenum windows and consisting of two opaque partition panels with staggered openings is proposed. The paper experimentally studies the sound transmission loss of six ventilation partitions with different acoustical treatments. The measurement results show that their sound transmission class (STC) ratings can be up to 21 STC points higher than that without any acoustical treatment, and the sound transmission losses are even higher than that of a closed single-layered partition at middle and high frequencies with respect to specific designs. The STC of the six ventilation partitions with acoustical treatments investigated in the present study is between STC 22 and STC 32, more than 11 STC points higher than that without any treatment.