Accurately predicting the propogation of sound in the built environment is the field of urban acoustics. Level Acoustics & Vibration, together with the chair Building Acoustics at the TU/e, conducts research on this topic to improve our understanding of sound itself and to improve prediction models.
Some examples of our research projects concerning urban acoustics are described below. For a full list of research projects as conducted by the Building Acoustics chair of the TU/e visit their website.
Computational methods
A pronounced specialism of the chair Building Acoustics is the development of time-efficient wave-based methods for propagation of sound through the built environment, thereby accurately including all wave effects. As wave-based methods remain low frequency approaches, the approach of hybrid computational techniques – with approximate methods for the higher frequencies – is explored. The methods aim to predict quantitative results as well as offer auralization techniques.
Propagation effects in urban environments
The urban sound environment is influenced by multiple aspects in the propagation path: ground reflections, reflections and diffraction by the urban topology as well as meteorological effects. At the Laboratorium voor Akoestiek the influence of urban vegetation on improving the urban sound environment, as well as the study to meteorological effects on urban sound propagation are emphasized.
Human echolocation
Blind people can train their skills to navigate and orientate indoor as well as outdoors by using their auditory perception of self-generated sounds as the tongue click, and its acoustical response from the physical environment, a technique also known as human echolocation. We aim to investigate the relation between the acoustic.
