Auditorium Acoustical Analysis



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The goal of this project was to create two auditoriums stacked on top of each other. I would then design the structure that supports these auditoriums and do an acoustical analysis. The idea was that the fake roof, made from acoustical panels, could be adapted to make a more acoustically sound auditorium. To do this, I would use the Pachyderm plugin for Grasshopper.

Definement basic geometry auditorium

Firstly I started designing the basic geometry I required from my auditorium and I set up the structural systems. I was planning on using the auditoriums I made for my studio project, that is why they needed to be functional, aesthically pleasing and acoustically correct.

Structural geometry for auditorium (columns and trusses)

Before I could start work on making the fake roof, I did some research into acoustics and which parameters would be important for me, and of course how I would be able to improve these values. Pachdyerm itself has a lot of different outputs like the: Impulse Response, Reverberation time (RT60), Early decay time (EDT), Clarity (C50 and C80), definition, speech transition index, Strength,… But since I plan on using the auditorium for lectures I choose a couple of these to focus on, to make it more manageable.

Playing with the geometry of the panels

Now that I have a goal, I set up the fake roof with a couple of different parameters, which I played with to create an auditorium that meets my goals. After a lot of trial and error, I was able to achieve all of the values I preset. Now that I have done the acoustical analysis, I can say that the different parameters that I had, the materiality and curvature of the roof, were the most impactful in achieving this goal.

Playing with the size/gap of the panels and the overall shape of the roof

Script used for acoustical panel roof

The full script

Using Pachyderm came with a large set of problems that I didn’t anticipate beforehand. Here I list some of my struggles and how I overcame these:

The software is very complex and made for professional usage, as a student who didn’t know much about acoustics it was really hard to understand this sometimes. Tutorials online and ChatGPT were of great help, not only to understand Pachyderm but also to understand acoustics better in general.

Acoustical Analysis Animation

Fly through used for my studio project

Script download