Developing sound absorbers for health facilities. How to meet hygienic and acoustic requirements in one product

The hygienic requirements in health facilities, in particular in hospitals, lead in most cases to hard and high reflective surface materials and subsequently to long reverberation times. The noise level is high and the resulting speech intelligibility is low - both indicating poor room acoustics with stress-increasing impacts. In contrast, good room acoustics will help staff members to work more concentrated and with less mistakes and patients will profit from a better prevention, regeneration and healing. Sound absorbers generally reduce reverb and create a comfortable acoustic environment. Additionally, sound absorbers for health facilities and hospitals need to reach the hygienic requirements on cleaning and disinfecting surfaces. This means in general, that surfaces need to be non-porous and smooth to implement the hygienic requirements, however, porous materials like foams are regularly used for sound absorbers. The purpose of the project was to develop a sound absorber that can be disinfected easily and with material that is chemically resistive to the usual disinfecting products. Constructive and acoustical solutions were developed and evaluated to meet the requirements of a high effective sound absorber with an aesthetic non-technical appearance to be used in common patient rooms and for specific applications in health facilities.