Instructions

Figure 2
• Flat Panel VMT, 87a and 40a
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• Flat Panel VMT, 40a
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• Flat Panel VMT, customized
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Why do airports
have high
background noise?
Typically, airports have very hard reective
surfaces, such as glass, concrete and
plasterboard. Therefore, they are normally
not acoustically treated leading to
acoustic issues.
In such environments, sound is strongly
reected many times around a room’s
surfaces taking a long time before it is
nally absorbed.
Reducing
background noise
The key point to take into account when
designing the acoustics of an airport is to
absorb the maximum amount of the, often
huge, acoustic energy generated by all
travelers and workers in the room. This will
both enhance the control of noise build-up
and speech intelligibility from the airport’s
PA system.
Best Practice Guidelines state maximum
RTs of 1,5 s in all of an airport’s relevant
areas, namely in gate areas and the
concourses
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.
This leads to very reverberant rooms and
in such spaces, background noise created
by multiple people talking, making noise,
etc., will quickly build up, making it very
hard for people to understand each other.
Consequently, people in such loud
environments need to raise their voices
above background noise levels to be able
to understand each other, thus increasing
background noise.
This build-up of sound, also known as
the Lombard effect, causes discomfort
to everyone, and ends up compromising
speech intelligibility of an airport’s PA
system since its messages will end
up being masked by the airport’s high
background noise.
Acoustic Treatment
Location
Ideally, acoustic treatment should be
located evenly by all of a room’s surfaces
(walls and ceiling). This will help to create a
more homogeneous acoustic environment
and will control any strong, specular
reections from all surfaces.
However, due to project constraints,
for the most part, this is not feasible.
In these situations, one should look for
the best possible compromise. Ceiling
treatment is usually preferential, since it
is ordinarily the biggest surface available
for acoustic treatment and it covers all of
the airport’s area.
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