Evaluation of Acoustic Comfort and Sound Energy Transmission in a Yacht

After being neglected for a long time, in the last years, ships have been recognized and studied as sound emitters. The sound energy they generate impacts the outside, but it can also affect the indoor quality of life if the environments are not properly designed. In fact, acoustic comfort plays a pivotal role, particularly in recreational crafts. In the present work, room acoustics and acoustic camera measurements were performed, inside a 50 m length overall yacht, chosen as a case study in order to evaluate the acoustic comfort. The Italian classification procedure UNI 11367:2010 for buildings was applied, and results have been compared to other international comfort classes. However, all of these are based on prescription for standard buildings, and the present work highlights that they do not account for the effective ship’s acoustic issues: sound energy transfer from impacts over ceilings and sound energy leakage. While attention of shipbuilders in acoustic comfort is shown in the measured good reverberation times, the acoustic camera revealed sound energy leakages corresponding to hidden escape ways that have been poorly insulated. This compromises the standardized sound difference between contiguous compartments and also the thermal insulation, as leakage involves air passages. The present work attempts to evolve the classification procedure by also including, for the first time, the reverberation time, but future studies focused on finding correct standardized impact level noise for ship cases are needed. In fact, their values were very high and not comparable with those measured in actual buildings and for which reference values have been designed.