Classroom acoustics in Belgian schools: requirements, analysis, design

In the context of the I-INCE Technical Initiative on Noise and Reverberation Control for schoolrooms, a state-of-the-art evaluation study is realized in the context of the Belgian situation. First an overview is given of the existing acoustical requirements and some description is given of the type of classrooms. In approximately 50 classrooms (nursery, primary and secondary) a detailed room acoustical analysis has been carried out. This included careful registration of the situation (dimensions and finishing) and registration of the impulse responses. These enabled to obtain the reverberation time as function of frequency as well as the typical quantities related to speech intelligibility. The results of this objective analysis are analyzed in view of specific requirements for the unoccupied rooms and of design guidelines for classrooms. These results are also compared with values obtained with calculation models.