Abstract
There is a growing scientific consensus that COVID-19 could be transmitted through the airborne route, putting ventilation at the heart of a mitigation strategy for buildings, including schools. The design of suitable systems requires to consider all aspects both for the control of air movement and the diffusion of bacterial loads, but also of other parameters of indoor air quality. This work examines the acoustic design of ventilation systems in schools and the effects that the systems have on the acoustic quality of the classrooms in compliance with the standard series UNI 11532. The standards provide a guideline on the design and the evaluation of the acoustic performances of schools, including attention for children with special educational needs. In particular, the case study refers to classrooms in the University Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona
Highlights
Several international studies have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the students [1,2] and the factors that most influence it, including classrooms’ thermal and acoustic comfort [6-12]
A recent Italian law [29] has established the standard for acoustic comfort for public building
The aim of the study was to analyzed the relation between the acoustic comfort and the indoor air quality in a sample of classrooms of the University Politecnica delle Marche (Ancona) after the installation of controlled mechanical ventilation systems
Summary
Several international studies have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the students [1,2] and the factors that most influence it, including classrooms’ thermal and acoustic comfort [6-12]. A recent Italian law [29] has established the standard for acoustic comfort for public building. The law deepens the details distinguishing acoustic insulation and acoustic comfort, together with other IAQ indicators, for public buildings. Adequate acoustic comfort targets are required in terms of noise control and acoustic quality. The schools must comply with the Italian standard UNI 11532 Part 1[22], for general requirements and UNI 11532 Part 2 [23] for specific requirements, as reverberation time (RT), Clarity (C50) and speech intelligibility (STI). The most important indoor quality for schools environment is to guarantees adequate speech intelligibility [3-5]. High background noise level and high reverberation are co-causes of low speech intelligibility in the classroom. The background noise is mainly influenced by the ambient noise levels (outside noise) [18,19], by the student behavior and by noise from internal service equipments
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