Virtual Building Acoustics

or and outdoor noise in private dwellings as well as in commercial worksites. People are exposed to the noise from neighbours, adjacent offices and road traffic which causes consequences of disturbance in sleep and physical or mental work impairments. Though ISO (International Standards Organization) provides sound insulation guidelines to protect citizens from the noise exposures, however, these guidelines do not provide an optimal acoustic satisfaction especially when specific sounds, for example a conversation varying in intelligibility or an intermittent noise. Therefore, measurement procedures applied in laboratory or in the field are just one part of the story.

This work addresses the present challenges in traditional sound insulation models, filters and auralization techniques, and establishing an interface between psychoacoustic research and building acoustics integrated with audio-visual virtual reality environments from both technical and psychoacoustic perspectives. Improvements are made in sound insulation prediction methods, and corresponding filter construction and rendering techniques for auralization of sound insulation.

Secondly, the virtual building acoustic auralization framework (VBA) is developed toward real-time interactive audio-visual technology i.e. virtual reality technology, in order to be able to introduce more realism and, hence, contextual features into psychoacoustic experiments. Listening experiments close to real-life situations are carried out by using VBA framework to show that this framework can be used as an alternate to design new test paradigms which help to better analyse and interpret the noise impacts in built-up environments situations depending on the actual activity such as living, working, learning, and rest.