Global index of the acoustic climate

The paper deals with the essential problem of noise
protection in the work environment. It develops the criteria of the assessment
of the acoustic climate quality in industrial rooms, often already at the stage
of their designing. The requirements of the acoustic safety of workplaces force
to improve constantly the processing of the results of model and experimental
investigations and to search for synthetic ways of presentation of the acoustic
quality of industrial rooms in order to be able to estimate the risk of
occupational diseases for the employees exposed to noise. Until quite lately,
the index method of assessment of the acoustic climate of industrial rooms was
based - on three partial indices: the technological one, the sound power and the
acoustic properties of the room. The paper presented here expands the method by
introducing additional indices: the index of impulse and impact noise, the index
of fittings density of the room, the index of the noise spectrum distribution
and the index of low-frequency noise. Such broad formulation of acoustic
phenomena in industrial rooms by the single-numbered Global Index is an
innovatory enterprise. The indices were experimentally estimated in the Forge.