Evaluation of Acoustic Silence, Acoustic Intelligibility and Acoustic Sacred Fa...

• Author(s): Menino A. S. M. P. Tavares ; S. Rajagopalan ; António P. O. Carvalho ; Satish J. Sharma
• Date: 2011
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10216/56633
• Origin: Repositório Aberto da Universidade do Porto
• Subject(s): Ciências Físicas; Física; Acústica
• Document Type: Conference Object
• Language: English

Description

Acoustic Silence, Acoustic Intelligibility and Acoustic Sacred Factor are the acoustically constituted determinants of tranquillity in a Catholic church. The results presented here are part of a study that investigates the behaviour of derived acoustic parameters in worship spaces. Acoustically, Silence Factor (SiF) is found to decay quadratically with LAeq (R2=0.95, p<0.01); Intelligibility Factor (InF) decays quadratically with mid-frequency Loudness GMF (R2=0.69, p<0.01) and the prediction of Sacred Factor is found to be insignificant. Architecturally, Silence Factor is found to grow linearly with the width of the nave (of the church) (R2=0.69, p=0.04), Intelligibility Factor grows linearly with the minimum height of the nave (HMIN_NV) (of the church) (R2=0.91, p<0.01) and the regression of Sacred Factor is found to be insignificant with the dimensional parameters. The prediction equations presented here could enable a more scientific approach to design and conservation of worship space.