Acoustic design lets athletes wear“headphones”

Acoustic design lets athletes wear“headphones”

August 6, 2024 # Paris Olympic Games #10 meters board diving end, three gold medalists Quan Hong chan and Chen Yunxi sat together, their body, look natural, show the “big man sitting”, the head actually still wearing headphones. Many people commented that this is the relaxation of top power. Some people wonder: why wear headphones when waiting for a break? Many netizens gave a pertinent answer, athletes waiting for rest to isolate the atmosphere of the arena, maintain focus, relax, relieve tension. So, from the perspective of architectural acoustics, as an acoustic designer, what kind of acoustic design for venues with population gathering such as stadiums can also help athletes?

According to the physical characteristics of the gymnasium, we can solve the acoustic problems by suspending the sound absorber in the flat space and designing the wooden sound absorber wall.

The porous structure of the wood sound-absorbing board meets the requirements of medium and low frequency sound-absorbing, which is achieved by acoustic impedance matching and multiple reflections, refractions and attenuation of sound waves. When the sound wave passes through the surface of the sound-absorbing board, a part of the sound wave will be reflected out, and a part of the sound wave will penetrate the surface into the board, and then be absorbed by the porous structural material in the sound-absorbing board, finally convert the energy into a small heat energy. Moreover, the substrate of the wooden perforated plate can also choose the MDF with moisture-proof function, or the glass magnesium plate with more stable moisture-proof performance, which has strong waterproof performance, is not easy to be corroded, and its sound absorption performance is stable.

The roof of the gym is the key to improving sound clarity. The spatial sound absorber completely exposes all parts of itself to the indoor sound field by hanging, so that it has multiple sound absorbing interfaces. The spatial sound absorber combines the loose porous structure of its own internal sound absorbent cotton with the resonance of the structure to absorb sound and reduce noise, which can shorten the reverberation time, improve the clarity of the sound, and solve the problem of sound defects such as sound focusing and echo.

The acoustic design combined with the sound absorbing board and the space sound absorbing body keeps the medium frequency reverberation time of the natatorium at 2.0s-3.5s, which ensures the loudness and clarity of the sound of sports training and sports events to a great extent, and improves the sound fullness and sense of space of referees and interpreters.