Effects of edge screens on the absorption of blocks of theatre chairs

This paper reports new measurement results investigating the use of screens around samples of theatre chairs to minimize edge effects when measuring theatre chair absorption in reverberation chambers. The absorption measurements included both full scale and scale model measurements in reverberation chambers and a model recital hall. The use of screens has been proposed to better approximate the sound absorption of the larger blocks of chairs in auditoria. The method of measuring the absorption of blocks of chairs with screens around their edges and located in the corner of a reverberation chamber did not give results indicative of the values obtained for larger areas in auditoria. The addition of screens around samples of chairs did not eliminate the variation of absorption coefficients with perimeter/area ratio. The results of extrapolations from measurements of blocks of screened chairs to infinite samples gave lower absorption coefficients than found for blocks of unscreened chairs. The absorption of chairs in large performance halls can best be predicted using the P/A method to extrapolate from reverberation chamber measurements of smaller samples of unscreened chairs, with a range of P/A values, to the larger samples and lower P/A ratios of blocks of chairs typical of performance spaces.