NOISE CONTROL BUILDING

  • Unique Paper ID: 143092
  • Volume: 2
  • Issue: 7
  • PageNo: 612-617
  • Abstract:
  • The energy consumption in the building sector can reach up to 40% of the total energy demand of an industrial country. For this reason, green building strategies can be extremely effective as far as fossil fuels savings and greenhouse gases reduction. Sustainable materials can play an important role, since less energy is generally required for their production than the one needed for conventional materials. Research work in the 1980s into what was then called sick building syndrome (now building-related ill health) confirmed to a new generation of researchers what was already well known to an older one - that people’s perception of control over their environment affects their comfort and satisfaction. Work on thermal comfort, notably that of Humphreys and McIntyre in the 1970s, had shown that the range of temperatures that building occupants reported as “comfortable” was wider in field studies than in controlled conditions in the laboratory. People seemed to be more tolerant of conditions the more control opportunities - switches, blinds and opening windows, for instance - were available to them. This is a vital finding to take from pioneering thermal comfort research and is the basis for what later came to be called ‘adaptive comfort theory’. People are more forgiving of discomfort if they have some effective means of control over alleviating it. However, many modern buildings seem to have just the opposite effect. They take control away from the human occupants and try to place control in automatic systems which then govern the overall indoor environment conditions, and deny occupants means of intervention. In the last years many new materials for noise control have been studied and developed as alternatives to the traditional ones (glass or rock wool); these materials are either natural (cotton, cellulose, hemp, wool, clay, etc) or made from recycled materials (rubber, plastic, carpet, cork, etc.). Their importance is proven by the fact that in Europe many Municipalities have introduced into Building Regulations specific recommendations to improve their use in new constructions, allowing a reduction of construction taxes or other benefits. The paper presents an updated survey of the characteristic

Cite This Article

  • ISSN: 2349-6002
  • Volume: 2
  • Issue: 7
  • PageNo: 612-617

NOISE CONTROL BUILDING

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