Space sound absorbers with next-generation materials: additional sound absorption for post-pandemic challenges in indoor acoustic environments

Thank you very much for your positive comments. As you pointed out, the sound absorbers discussed here are movable, so they can be rearranged as needed. In addition, it can be easily removed when it is no longer needed. Given the difficulty of predicting how long the ‘new style’ will last, we believe that a method of controlling the sound field, without major modifications to existing buildings, can be used. In other words, it is a flexible and reversible design method. This is a concept that will be required in some form for newly designed buildings. We will try to add explanations more on these points in detail in the text in a revised version.

Once again, many thanks for your open comment.

K. Sakagami

Thank you very much for the suggestive comments. As you pointed out, many aesthetically pleasing designs of sound-absorbing materials have been seen in recent years, and we believe that the overall design of the built environment should be taken into account. In our research, we have been investigating prototypes with simple shapes such as cylinders etc for ease of theoretical analysis, but in the future, we would like to consider the optimization of the shapes from an ergonomic point of view. In this paper, we have introduced a case in which we considered the case of adding a function as a lighting equipment, and we recognize that the improvement of value-added functions in addition to design is one of the future challenges.

Once again, many thanks for your open commnent.

K. Sakagami