Keywords
Offices
Industrial environment
Speech interference.
How to Cite
Abstract
The clarity in communication, comfort, and concentration are critical issues in the performance and productivity of professionals who use offices in industrial environments. The evaluation of acoustic comfort in these offices should consider the measurement of sound pressure levels (SPL), reverberation times (RT), as well as the quantification of background noise and speech intelligibility. The present research aims to evaluate acoustic comfort in office environments located in the powerhouse of a hydroelectric plant. For this, the investigation was based on the evaluation of the interference of background noise and TR in speech intelligibility of six office rooms from three office buildings, based on NPS measurements, quantification and analysis of the NC and RC Mark II noise criterion curves, and the Speech Transmission Index (STI). The six indoor environments were also evaluated through the calculation of the TR of Sabine and Eyring. All office rooms did not meet the comfort criteria of the NC 40 curve, had unbalanced spectra between 125 and 500 Hz and perceptible vibrations at low frequencies (16 or 31.5 Hz) that exceeded 75 dB. Four rooms attended recommended TR values, remaining between 0.3 and 0.5 seconds. The STI was rated between bad and reasonable, ranging from 0.2 to 0.5. It can be concluded that industrial environment as powerhouses of hydroelectric plants similar to those studied does not favor the installation of offices without interfering with the acoustic comfort and oral communication of the users, being necessary an adequate project for prolonged use in intellectual works.
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