An Experimental Study of the Performance of a Crossed Rib Diffuser in Room Acoustic Control

This paper presents a crossed rib diffuser (CRD) as an effective tool for room acoustic control. We performed an experimental investigation of its effectiveness using a specimen manufactured for this trial. The CRD is constructed by overlapping two one-dimensional (1D) periodic rib diffusers with different specifications so that they are crossed at non-right angles. The CRD achieves a higher scattering coefficient than 1D periodic rib diffusers in a wide band while maintaining the simple and friendly design of 1D periodic rib diffusers applicable to various architectural spaces. Moreover, inserting an absorbing layer between upper and lower ribs of the CRD, (CRD-A) yields a high broadband absorption coefficient. We first evaluated the random-incidence scattering coefficient of CRD using a 1/5 scaled model in comparison with those of 1D periodic diffusers assessed with a numerical method. Then, absorption coefficients for the CRD and the CRD-A were measured using a reverberation room. Subsequently, an experiment on a small meeting room with a 1D periodic rib diffuser, the CRD and the CRD-A was conducted to present performance of the CRD in room acoustic control. Impulse response measurements and evaluations of reverberation parameters (T20 and EDT) and speech clarity (D50) were conducted. Additionally, we present differences in structure of reflected sounds found for the flat wall, the CRD and the CRD-A visually using a four-channel sound field microphone.