Perforated Steel Stud to Improve the Acoustic Insulation of Drywall Partitions

Abstract

Steel studs are an inevitable part of drywall construction as they are lightweight and offer the required structural stability. However, the studs act as sound bridges between the plasterboards, reducing the overall sound insulation of the wall. Overcoming this often calls for wider cavity walls and complex stud decoupling fixtures that increase the installation cost while reducing the floor area. As an alternative approach, this research reveals the potential of perforated studs to improve the acoustic insulation of drywall partitions. The acoustic and structural performance is characterized using a validated finite element model that acted as a prediction tool in reducing the number of physical tests required. The results established that an acoustic numerical model featuring fluid-structure-interaction can predict the weighted sound reduction index of a stud wall assembly at an accuracy of ±1 dB. The model was used to analyze six perforated stud designs and found them to outperform the sound insulation of non-perforated drywall partitions by reducing the sound bridging. Overall, the best performing perforated stud design was found to offer improvements in acoustic insulation of up to 4 dB, while being structurally compliant.

Identification of Key Factors Influencing Sound Insulation Performance of High-Speed Train Composite Floor Based on Machine Learning

“…Before calculating the contribution of sound insulation and identifying the key influencing factors, it is necessary to propose the factors that may affect the overall sound insulation characteristics of the composite floor structure as comprehensively as possible and organize these factors to form the original feature database. Based on the test results of the above 118 groups of samples and referring to previous research results [3,4], the following factors were considered as the original characteristics: (1) The surface density, thickness, and weighted sound insulation index (R w ) [21] of each sound-insulation layer. In a floor composite structure, in addition to the sound-insulation layer composed of different types of sound-insulation felt, the floor cloth, inner floor, draining board, and aluminum profile layers should also be considered as sound-insulation layers.…”

“…However, these train bodies consist of complex composite structures with multiple material layers of various classes. The sound insulation performance is highly dependent on the physical properties of each material [3,4]; hence, optimizing the sound insulation design of a high-speed train composite structure is very difficult.…”

An Expert Knowledge-Based System to Evaluate the Efficiency of Dry Construction Methods

“…Compared to the traditional wet construction of partitions, floors, walls, and ceiling plasters, dry construction techniques potentially improve the properties of these structures, such as material, static, fireproof, acoustic, seismic resistance, etc. [19][20][21][22][23][24][25].…”