The Sound Insulation of Water

New developments in architectural free form shaped buildings lead to the design of liquid filled multilayer membranes as a façade construction [1]. The water between the membranes can collect or radiate heat or cold from the façade and transfers it to and from the building services system. In the design competition "Create a Barrier of Silence" by Schiphol airport, the design-team "Silent Blue" has presented a noise barrier that implemented the multilayer membranes filled with water as a roof and wall structure [2]. In this design the water inside the membranes is also used as a sound insulating material. In the context of the barrier design competition, a sound reduction of 20 dB was required in the 31.5 Hz octave band for the attenuation of ground noise by airplanes. A new laboratory test setup was created and sound insulation measurements of liquids have been performed by Rodrigues and Coutinho [3]. The presented results showed a promising use of water as a sound insulating material; however the absolute results may not be reliable due to limitations of the small measurement setup. To obtain the sound insulation values for a wider frequency range, a laboratory measurement has been performed on a 10 m2 water layer with a average thickness of 26, 44 and 83 mm in accordance with ISO 140-3 [4]. The measurement setup and results from this measurement are presented in this paper.