The main aim of this thesis is to examine environmentally sustainable acoustics, considering mainly urban residential areas. The study has systematically examined the three essential aspects of environmentally sustainable acoustics, namely, people, buildings and resources. The investigations are focused on three aspects: (l) the effects of urban acoustics on people: a systematic field survey on people's perceptions which considered people's living experiences, sound preferences and social factors; (2) a series of buildings' life cycle assessments which examined the environmental impact from cradle to grave of the building's lifespan and tried to further comprehend acoustic sustainability of residential buildings; (3) various possibilities concerning the use of wind turbines around and above the residential buildings in an attempt to discover how to regenerate renewable wind energy and to avoid serious noise effects. The study has then been expanded from the three aspects, by revealing potential to achieving environmentally sustainable acoustics. Overall, it has been proved that environmentally sustainable acoustics is an essential part of the environmentally sustainability development. The thesis makes a positive contribution to urban residential areas through the illustration of a sustainable acoustics approach to environmentally sustainable development, and demonstrates how these factors should be associated with each other. Acoustics and sustainability is a rather new field this study only reveals some key issues. More systematic and in-depth study in other aspects is still needed.

Gamelan music differs from Western classical music in two fundamental ways - in the characteristics of the music itself and in the spaces that the music is played. There has been no previous research to determine the preference associated with both these aspects., and yet gamelan music are being played more and more in Western style concert halls and the impact of this on the subjective perception of the music is unknown. With this in mind, the objectives of the research were to determine: the preferred sound field design for Javanese gamelan performance hall, including: the preferred listening level, the preferred Initial Time Delay Gap, the preferred Subsequent Reverberation Time, and the preferred Interaural Crosscorrelation (lACC); and the preferred configurations of surface diffusion over the frequency range of interest for the Javanese gamelan music concert hall. Computer modelling and simulation method using ODEON and subjective preference testing using the output of the modelling will be used to obtain the end result.

Room modes are a recognised problem in small critical listening rooms and are known to cause colouration of sound reproduced within them. Investigations on the causes and solutions for this problem have been carried out for some time. Interest in the topic has extended to loudspeaker manufacturers who have mainly concentrated in developing methods for controlling the loudspeaker-room interaction in order to ameliorate low frequency reproduction. Compared to objective work on passive and active control methods, the study of the subjective perception of room resonances has been somewhat neglected. Available publications mostly concern the effects of single resonances, which are perhaps not fully representative of conditions as experienced in real rooms. A study into the subjective perception of room modes is presented. The experimental methodology employs psychoacoustic techniques to study the perception of factors such as modal distribution, and effects of resonances on single tones. Results show that the subjective perception of room modes is strongly affected by temporal issues, and that changes exerted merely on magnitude frequency response are detectable but not likely to remove the effects of resonances for all listeners. Furthermore, it is shown that a reduction of the modal Q-factor, associated with a reduction of decay rates, has a significant effect in decreasing the detection of resonances. Q-factor difference limen were evaluated for three reference decay characteristics corresponding to reference Q-factors of 30, 10 and 1. The limen were 6±2.8, 10±4.1 and 16±5.4 respectively, meaning that detection of changes to modal decay decreases with decreasing decay time. These results may be used to define more perceptually relevant design guidelines for critical listening environments, and indicate target criteria for control techniques used in room correction. The outcomes of this investigation will have repercussions on the design of better rooms for critical listening.

- / -

Il y a plus d'un siècle, les conditions de travail ont fortement évolué sous l'influence de l'industrialisation et notamment à partir de nouvelles méthodes de travail du type Tayloriennes. Des bureaux ouverts à l'Action Office des années 50, c'est plus de 60% de la population active qui est concernée aujourd'hui en Europe. L'évolution des réglementations, liée à la prise de conscience collective des effets psychosomatiques des nuisances sonores, entraîne l'implication par les maîtrises d'ouvrages de bureaux d'études acoustiques pour la préconisation et la mise en œuvre dans la construction et la réhabilitation des espaces tertiaires. La rencontre d'acteurs scientifiques et industriels a donné lieu à ce travail de thèse, étudiant la propagation de l'énergie acoustique pour des espaces dont une des dimensions est différente des autres.La méthode se réduit à la conservation du tenseur énergie-impulsion puis à un système d'équations couplées sur l'intensité acoustique et sur la densité d'énergie. C'est un système hyperbolique d'équations linéaires aux dérivés partielles du premier ordre. Une méthode d'intégration sur une à deux dimensions de l'espace permet d'introduire les coefficients d'absorption et de diffusion moyens. Nous introduisons le potentiel d'intensité et nous écrivons le système sous la forme d'une équation hyperbolique linéaire aux dérivées partielles du second ordre impliquant la densité d'énergie, l'intensité acoustique ou le potentiel d'intensité sur une ou deux dimensions. Nous proposons une méthode analytique approchée permettant de vérifier les résultats à une dimension.Pour la conception acoustique des plateaux de bureaux, la modélisation informatique est un outil remarquable souffrant pourtant de limitations restreignant ses applications. Nous résolvons le formalisme introduit dans ce travail par la méthode des différences finies dans le domaine temporel sur une et deux dimensions. Les schémas utilisés sont stables et explicites et peu couteux en mémoires informatiques. Le fait que nous nous intéressions à une variable énergétique permet de considérer un pas de modélisation spatial important - de l'ordre du mètre - et d'accélérer d'autant les calculs.Le partenariat industriel nous a notamment permis d'accéder à des espaces de type plateaux de bureaux. Nous comparons les résultats des modélisations avec des mesures in situ conduites avec un microphone SoundField ST250 permettant l'estimation de la densité d'énergie et de l'intensité acoustique. / More than a century ago, working conditions have evolved under the influence of industrialization and especially of new management methods such as the Taylorism. From Open-Spaces to Action Offices in the 1950s, more than 60 % of the European working population is concerned today. The evolution of regulations, linked to the collective awareness of the psychosomatic effects of noise, has led clients to request the involvement of acoustical consultants for giving recommendations and supervising their implementation in constructions and rehabilitations of office spaces. This is why scientific and industrial stakeholders joined forces for this thesis dedicated to the propagation of sound energy within rooms characterized by one dimension different from the others.The method developed in this thesis reduces the conservation of the energy-stress tensor to a system of coupled equations for the sound intensity and the sound energy density. It is a hyperbolic system of linear, partial differential equations of first order. Integrating this system on one or two space dimensions leads to the introduction of the mean absorption and diffusion coefficients. We then introduce an intensity potential and write the system in the form of a linear hyperbolic equation involving partial derivatives of second order for the energy density, the sound intensity, or the intensity potential in one or two dimensions. We also propose an analytical approximated method to verify the results in one dimension.For the acoustic design of open-space offices, computer modelling is an outstanding tool. Yet limitations restrict its applications. We solve the equations introduced in this work by the finite-difference time-domain method in the one- and two-dimensional cases. We use stable and explicit schemes that require little computer memory. Considering energy variables allows the use of large spatial steps - of the order of the metre - and accelerates the calculations.The industrial partnership notably gave us access to open-space offices. We compare the results of the modelling with in situ measurements carried out with a SoundField ST250 microphone that makes it possible to estimate the sound energy density and the sound intensity.