Evaluation of predictive methods of acoustic comfort parameters in university classrooms

Given the increasing attention of the scientific literature on the achievement of high levels of acoustic comfort in classrooms, this work aims to establish the accuracy of analytical prediction methods present in standards and in literature for the calculation of the main intelligibility parameters inside speech rooms, with particular reference to the acoustics of university classrooms. The predictive methods will be evaluated both for their calculation speed and their reliability with the aim of possibly allowing their better future use in the preliminary analysis of classrooms. The values found by the analytical prediction methods were then compared with those measured in field in five different classrooms of the School of Engineering of the University of Pisa and with the values provided by the Italian regulations, in order to be able to directly evaluate the possibility of their use. The results found show that the methods reported here can find reliable values for a preliminary estimation in view of the compliance with the current regulations, but clearly cannot replace more accurate survey systems.