Citation

Roy KP. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 2013; 134(5): 4174.

Affiliation

Bldg. Products Technol. Lab, Armstrong World Industries, 2500 Columbia Ave., Lancaster, PA 17603kproy@armstrong.com.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, American Institute of Physics)

DOI

10.1121/1.4831302

PMID

24181634

Abstract

Warren Blazier was well known for his work with sound and vibration in mechanical systems, e.g., HVAC equipment. As such, he was particularly active at ASHRAE in addition to the ASA meetings. Although I was always focused more on the "room acoustics" side of the design, I none-the-less offered to help edit the 1999 ASHRAE Handbook chapter 43 with Warren and Chuck Ebbing. This section dealt with "Indoor Sound Criteria," and what an eye opening event this turned out to be. You might say that I jumped into the fire as there was an ongoing "tug-of-war" over which rating system should be adopted to describe background noise in buildings from mechanical systems. NC, RC, RC mark II, NCB [ellipsis (horizontal)] several of these had been used up to this point and lots of controversy existed as to what to include in the re-write. A somewhat historic special meeting of ASHRAE TC2.6 was held in Boston on the evening of Sunday 27 June 1997 from 3:30 to 6:30 pm where this was discussed to resolve the issue. Both Warren and Leo Beranek were asked to make presentations on the merits of the competing approaches. And this is what was decided!!

Language: en