Experimental Determination of Acoustic Properties of Brick Block by Reverberation Chambers Method

Acoustic deterioration of environment exhibits long-termly increasing tendency which negatively affects more and more people. It is especially visible in cities with heavy transport, industrial areas or places close to the airports. Therefore, construction industry must react and produce building materials and construction elements with reasonable acoustical properties. Brick is very frequently used building material in Central Europe due to its mastered process of production, good mechanical properties and durability. However, important task lies in improvement of its thermal and acoustic properties that can be achieved by convenient incorporation of voids with defined geometry into the brick body. Whereas enhancement of thermal properties of brick blocks has been already satisfactorily handled out, acoustic properties are still subjected to experimental tests and measured results are subsequently taken into account in consecutive design. Determination of acoustic properties of brick blocks is, therefore, a crucial assumption in such process. In this paper, brick block produced by one of the two leading producers of bricks in the Czech Republic was studied by means of measurements in reverberation chambers designed for the purpose of acoustical tests of small-scale construction elements.