Abstract

Relationship to Building Science (BSc) App: In the domain of Building Science (BSc), this paper focuses on building design principles related to sound environments that are conducive to comfortable speech communication and the enjoyment of music. It provides direct access to a BSc App that offers more than 420 calculation and information functions in the entire range of building science areas, comprising daylighting, artificial lighting, noise control, room acoustics, climate and thermal comfort, solar energy, and structural systems (https://research.chobugroup.com/buildingscience/analyzer/).

Information Content: The paper briefly explains the principles of physics that underlie the propagation of sound at a level that is tailored to design professionals and then discusses in more detail the concepts and objectives that should be considered and the quantitative methods that are available at the early design stages. During those early stages in the design process technical consultants are typically not available and there is a danger that the evolving design solution is based at least partly on erroneous technical assumptions. Unfortunately, that occurs quite often and leads to time consuming and costly design revisions downstream when consultants come on-board during the more detailed design development stages. Therefore, the intent of these quantitative methods is to assist the designers to formulate approximate solutions in the technical building science areas that are basically sound and can be extended into practical system solutions without requiring major changes to the preliminary design solution that embodies the intent of the designer.

The more than 250 calculation functions that are available in the BSc App are integrated with the design objectives and technical concepts described in the paper and the reader is encouraged to try them out by linking to the BSc App while reading the paper. Each of these functions has been designed for intuitive ease of use with drop-down menus that include typical default values that can be changed by the user. The intent of each function is to provide the kind of approximate, fundamentally sound and less detailed solution of the particular technical aspect that is appropriate during the early design stages.

Disciplines

Architecture

Number of Pages

61

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URL: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/arch_fac/116