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Earthquake engineers?


Stewart Newlands

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When talking to building construction professionals, sometimes it helps to talk about things they are more happy with, so why not talk about earthquake protection for your acoustic isolation rather than acoustic separation, civil engineering talks far more about ground movment than room shake.

 

;) builders and concepts

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Indeed.

 

I suspect that if we had audio frequencies at earthquake amplitude, the result might be rather unpleasant!

 

Well...either that, or Lemmy's monitor mix at a Motorhead concert!

 

Seriously, I'm pretty sure the techniques required would be very different. I've always found it better to have the acoustic/isolation design done by a specialist and just issue the construction specialists a set of working drawings to construct.

 

Bob

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  • 2 weeks later...

yes the ampltitudes and frequencies involved are very different but alot of the basic principles are the same. im an acoustics student and alot of the derivation and theory we cover with regards to loudspeakers, mics, line arrays etc etc start from modeling a mass on a spring. it sounds a bit simple but that is essentially all a loudspeaker is: the diaphragm is the mass and the mountings are the spring. (its actually a lot more complex than this but you get the idea.

 

im sure earthqake modeling starts of with something similar and probably ends up at similar if not the same results, after all an earhqauke is a vibration.

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I'm not so sure.

 

This is getting way OT for a theatre forum and way outside my sphere of knowledge but....

 

As I understand it, earthquate engineering is much more concerned with stopping the building developing a harmonic motion which relates directly to the earthquake, in turn causing the very slow vibrations to gradually increase until there's a structural failure. In modern high rises this sometimes results in using huge pendulums below the building to act as dampers.

 

Sound proofing, on the other hand, can be achieved simply by creating sufficient mass along with a physical disconnection between the exterior noise source and the interior quiet area.

 

Bob

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alot of the derivation and theory we cover with regards to loudspeakers, mics, line arrays etc etc start from modeling a mass on a spring.

er yes, but you have to take into account the mechanical, acoustical and electrical factors when building up the equivalent circuit. I'm sure you will do this in your derivations.

im sure earthqake modeling starts of with something similar and probably ends up at similar if not the same results, after all an earhqauke is a vibration.
sic

 

Actually, I'd suggest that earthquake modelling is quite a bit more complex. With regards to the original poster, the precepts of noise and vibration control are quite well understood, and there are a large number of consultants and professionals who practice in this field.

 

Even if the acoustics are not actually understood, projects such as Robust Standard Details show the builder how it should be done to achieve the required attenuation. Building for earthquake resistance is not a skill commonly shown in the UK and may not actually achieve the same goal. One tries to stop transmission of noise, the other tries to stop the building from catastrophically collapsing. Vibration is allowed to be transmitted, but flexibility in the structure allows it to move without breakup.

 

Anyhow.... this is straying somewhat ;-)

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...

 

Sound proofing, on the other hand, can be achieved simply by creating sufficient mass along with a physical disconnection between the exterior noise source and the interior quiet area

 

...

 

Correct. Vibration isolation is v important. isolating one leaf from the other so they don't vibrate each other.

Different masses on the different leaves helps too, as different size masses have different resonant frequencies, so if one leaf resonates at one freq. you don't want the other to resonate at the same, cause you'll likely get amplification at that freq.

And yes, there has to be sufficient mass too!

 

Sort of thing.

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