Investigation of effect of acoustic comfort parameters on education in educational buildings

Effective communication between people for all fields of life should be obtained to reach a more qualified life standard that is aimed by human beings. Quality, intelligibility and understanding of speech are very important issues for all indoor areas. If these areas are education buildings, classrooms, the level of importance increases much more. Optimum levels of physical parameters have substantial roles on hearing and understanding both inside and outside. One of the most important physical parameters in the classrooms is the noise level that is a function of Classroom-Speech-Intelligibility criteria. The aim of the classrooms is hearing and understanding the whole speech comfortably. Therefore, when compared with the other building, educational buildings are sensitive places if subjected to noise disturbance. In this thesis study, first of all, outdoor noise levels of all high school buildings located in Fatih district of Istanbul was measured to evaluate the outside noise level and to determine from where noise originates. These efforts showed us that all high schools are under pressure of higher outside noise levels exceeding legislational standard values, and that these outside noise were originated from mainly traffic. Having the highest outdoor noise level, Pertevniyal and Şehremini high schools were selected as pilot schools to analyze the effect of the noise on learning and understanding the lessons. Outdoor and indoor noise levels of classrooms in Pertevniyal and Şehremini high schools were determined both by theoretical and calculations while windows are opened and closed. Also indoor acoustic parameters which are reverberation time, clarity, reverberant sound level, direct sound level were calculated by determination of the physical ambient features classroom. It was found that, while the classrooms were occupied there were higher indoor noise levels in all classrooms. Therefore, there were unsuitable physical ambient conditions for all the classrooms. To evaluate how noise affects learning, understanding and behaviors of the students, a questionnaire study was realized in totally 10 classrooms in both schools. The main purpose of the questionnaire study was to get a relationship between indoor noise and intelligibility of the students during the lessons. At the end of the questionnaire study, it was found out that most of the students were disturbed by the present indoor noise levels. To determine the relationship between questionnaire results and the data determined for indoor comfort parameters, at first, a grading depending on the "unsuitability" of the classrooms for selected related questions from questionnaire was made, and later on averaged "unsuitability" degrees between 0 to 10 for each classroom was determined. Regression analyses showed that there is a high degree of correlation between the indoor noise levels and questionnaire results. It was found that, the most important adverse affecting factor onto learning is outdoor noise level at educational buildings. Solutions for the acceptable noise levels in the school was also investigated in this study. For this reason, some different noise barrier sorts which are located between school and highway were examined. According to the noise barrier sorts and vehicle speed, a standart was determined for minimum distance between school and highway.Key Words: Outdoor noise, Indoor noise, Traffic, Educational buildings, Indoor acoustics