Whatever our age, a canteen is an essential social living space of our modern world.
As children, we are registered in the canteen of a nursery, a day-care center and then a school ; the soundscape is then resulting from the learning by young guests of communication techniques based on language and on other sound emissions less codified.
As adolescents, we go to the canteen of a high school or of a learning center ; the schoolboyish jokes then cheerfully contribute to the sound atmosphere.
As adults, we go to the canteen of our university or our workplace (corporate restaurant, soldiers everydayfare romm, officers' mess); discussions can then go well and impact the sound environment as long as they relate to sports events or other newas topics.
This is why a canteen must have minimum acoustic characteristics to allow this building to be used according to its purpose, in particular with regard to the reverberation problem, which is likely to contribute to the increase of the levels of ambient noise.
It is therefore necessary, during construction or in case of renovation, to install sound absorbing materials by covering a sufficient proportion of the hard surfaces, by nature reflective: this is an important aspect of sound insulation in buildings.
Depending on the site constraints, the architectural choices, the planning requirements, the condition of the supports and their ability to accept additional loads related to the weight of soundproofing equipment, these sound absorbing materials can be distributed with more or less uniformly on the walls, below the ceiling (or below the under-roof) or even in the form of subsets being not parallel to the support partitions e.g. by means of hanging baffles or of movable partitions (absorbent screens).
ITS will participate in noise reduction in a canteen near Paris, in the Ile de France region (France).
The chosen soundproofing solution will be based on the implementation of sound-absorbing screens (sometimes called isophonic screens) i.e. equipment placed on the ground, on bases, with two faces having a sufficiently high sound absorption coefficient at frequencies corresponding to the human voice (in particular at midrange frequencies, in central frequency octaves 500 Hz and 1 kHz, for which noise emissions are maximum).
The screen effect (in relation with the physical phenomenon of diffraction) related to the interposition of these absorbent screens will be favorable to the limitation of the propagation of the noise from a table towards the neighboring tables, which is an interesting aspect the situation, to maintain a minimum tranquility propitious for private conversations.
Thus, the ambient noise will be kept at level sufficiently low to avoid the general brouhaha which is so undesirable in a space of exchange and discussion such as a canteen.
The mobility of these noise reduction equipment will allow the flexibility that could be made necessary by a future remodeling of the dining room in case of change in the organization of the service or in case of increase in the number of users of the canteen.
In the meantime, their color being suiting (because chosen from a wide range of colors allowing them to be perfectly matched to other decorative elements, whatever they are) will be an important factor for visual ambiance.
And this is a good thing, because the noise reduction devices in this canteen will be built to last.