Sound Quality Experiments in a Student Hostel with Newly Designed Sonic Crystal Window

Abstract

A new design of sonic crystal window was designed to replace the existing glass louver window in a student hostel in NUS in order to achieve good balancing of natural ventilation, daylighting and noise mitigation. Numerical studies were performed on the SC window to confirm the window design. The noise level inside the room was measured using sound quality head and torso simulator for simulated white noise, pink noise and construction noise on the ground floor as well as the actual environmental noise. Ten human subjects were asked to evaluate the construction noise and environmental noise inside the room. Psychoacoustics analyses were also performed on these two types of noises. The SC window was designed such that it can attenuate the noise at frequency range of traffic noise. The SC window was able to attenuate extra 4.59 and 9.40 dBA of white noise at full frequency range and frequencies ranging from 700 to 1400 Hz, respectively. The overall amount of pink noise attenuated by the SC window was similar to that of white noise. It can be concluded that gender affected the human subjective perception toward construction noise. All human subjects felt that the degree of annoyance for environmental noise passing through the glass louver window was higher than the SC window. The SC window would successfully reduce the loudness of the construction and environmental noises compared to the glass louver window.