Acoustic predictions in industrial spaces using a diffusion model

Abstract

Industrial spaces are known to be very noisy working environment. This noise exposure can be uncomfortable, tiring, or even harmful, at worst. Industrial spaces have several characteristics: they are often huge flat volumes fitted with many obstacles and sound sources. Moreover, they are usually surrounded by rooms where low noise levels are required. The existing prediction tools can seldom model all these phenomena accurately. In this paper, a prediction model based on a diffusion equation is presented. The successive developments carried out to deal with the various propagating phenomena met in industrial spaces are shown. For each phenomenon, numerical or experimental examples are given to highlight the validity of this model. It is also shown that its computation load is very little in comparison to ray-tracing-based methods. In addition, this model can be used as a reliable and flexible tool to study the physics of the coupling between rooms. Finally, an application to a virtual factory is presented. Copyright © 2012 Alexis Billon et al.