A COMPARISON OF MEASURED REVERBERATION TIMES IN FURNISHED AND UNFURNISHED CLASSROOMS

A COMPARISON OF MEASURED REVERBERATION
TIMES IN FURNISHED AND UNFURNISHED
CLASSROOMS
N Barber ' AECOM, Nottingham
T Lucas AECOM, Nottingham
1 INTRODUCTION
The revised acoustic performance standards for schools now allow for reverberation time testing to be carried out in rooms which are furnished for normal use. However. when carrying out acoustical calculations or modelling to predict the reverberation time within a teaching space it can be difcult to accurately account for the effect of the furniture. Furthermore. it is often desirable for the
contractor to carry out ore-completion testing to demonstrate compliance with the standards before
rooms are fully furnished. It is. therefore. often necessary to undertake testing in unfurnished rooms,
meaning that the results cannot be directly compared to the criteria contained within 8893.
As far as the authors are aware. there are limited publicly available data regarding the effect of
furniture on the measured reverberation time within classrooms.
The intention of this paper is. therefore. to provide a set of test data from which appropriate
corrections to reverberation times measured in unfurnished rooms can be derived. Measurements
have been carried out within several classrooms of different shapes and sizes and including varying
degrees of acoustic treatments. in both furnished and unfurnished conditions. with the results
compared