14 DAY TRIAL // Shielding a room against excessive noises is tremendously hard to do, given that the surfaces of most materials used in interior design do not absorb sound waves. Placing heavy velvet curtains all over the place is also not an option, but a new lightweight curtain material could fulfill this role.
The innovation belongs to experts at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (EMPA), who developed the material with silk weaving company Weisbrod-Zürrer AG as its industrial partner. Textile designer Annette Douglas was also involved in the research.
The investigation set out from the necessity of creating quieter work environments. Sound absorbing surfaces are critical for creating them, but steel and concrete – the main materials from which office buildings are made of – are very poor sound absorbers.
Velvet curtains can be used for the job, but futuristic workspaces are highly unlikely to adopt the cumbersome curtains, which also block view. But what if you could have a material that has the same effect as velvet, but is considerably lighter?
This is exactly what EMPA experts developed. Acoustics experts “are pretty astonished when they see the readings we are achieving with the new curtains in the reverberation room,” the team explains.
“The weighted sound absorption coefficient is between 0.5 and 0.6,” explains the head of the EMPA Acoustics/Noise Division, Kurt Eggenschwiler. What these readings mean is that the new material is five times more efficient at absorbing sounds than conventional translucent curtains.
“The new curtain genuinely absorbs sound, noticeably improving the room acoustics – and its design is also very high quality,” the expert comments further. The main advantage the new material has over velvet is that it is translucent.
This makes it suitable for uses in auditoriums, restaurants, hotel lobbies, seminar rooms, offices, living rooms and other places where people need to understand each other over excessive background noise.
According to the EMPA team, the new fabric was first created on a computer, by designer Annette Douglas. She has extensive experience in studying the interactions between sounds and textiles, Science Blog reports.
Engineers at Weisbrod-Zürrer then meticulously began to weave samples of the material, while the EMPA team conducted specific measurements of their properties. Gradually, the new fabric was optimized to absorb sound waves with great proficiency.