A study on acoustical protection effects of plenum windows

Abstract

Urban noise is likely to continue as a major issue in densely populated cities. The use of natural ventilation for energy saving and sustainable reasons become difficult to implement for the buildings in noisy urban environments. A staggered inlet and outlet openings design of plenum window was investigated in the present study. Two-dimensional model simulation was used to examine the effect of acoustic benefits of this window system relative to the different sound incidence of angle by solving numerical Helmholtz equation. Fully opened window is used as reference case. The results show that the insertion loss of plenum window is affecting by its staggered design and orientation of the window. There is peak of insertion loss observed at lower frequency which becomes sharper when the opening size of the window becomes smaller. [Y.G. Tong sponsored by Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia.]