Making construction and manufacturing more sustainable: 2022–⁠2023 annual report

NRC-led research is helping make buildings more energy efficient and resilient to climate change, and supporting more sustainable manufacturing practices that reduce carbon emissions and energy consumption.

Quieter homes for healthier lives

Unwanted noise is more than just a nuisance. It can also put people at higher risk of health impacts, including cognitive impairment in children and cardiovascular issues. As population densification increases and more people live in multi-unit buildings, studying the effects of noise becomes more important.

The Construction Research Centre's acoustics labs enable research into how sound travels through walls and floors, particularly in multi-unit buildings. Markus Müller-Trapet is a research officer who leads the Building Acoustics team at the construction acoustics lab in Ottawa, Ontario. Among other things, his team is currently studying the effects of "impact noise" such as footsteps and dropped objects.

"The effects of noise are serious. Understanding how noise travels through buildings—and what techniques and materials can stop it—is what my team does. Our lab, which is unique in North America, enables us to build multi-room mock-ups to test sound transmission for the Canadian market. Our work helps manufacturers of innovative solutions that want to succeed in a competitive building product market, while also providing evidence-based recommendations for acoustical requirements for consideration by the committees that develop the National Building Code of Canada.

In the last year or so, we've been doing a lot of work to expand our capacity so we can meet the high demand for our facility. This year, we completed the commissioning of our new 4-room, 2-floor flanking sound transmission lab and finalized the design for a new floor testing lab. Our existing floor testing lab is usually booked at least 6 months in advance, so the construction of the new lab, which will improve efficiency and enable us to test innovative high-performance floor systems, is crucial for serving our many industry clients.

The facility renewal funding will help us expand even further and offer even more testing options. We'll be building a wall testing lab, a horizontal 2-room flanking transmission lab and a new listening room. The upgrades are designed with current and future construction types and materials in mind that will ensure low-carbon floor and wall systems also meet requirements for sound insulation. The increased capabilities will allow us to test larger assembly types, such as multi-layer mass timber cassette floor assemblies. We're even turning our office space into a 'living lab' where we'll use sensors and other technologies to study the effects of various solutions on our own comfort and privacy while we work. All this will help us answer more practical questions and keep Canadians healthier and safer from the effects of excessive noise."

"We're even turning our own office space into a 'living lab' where we'll use sensors and other technologies to study the effects of various solutions on our own comfort and privacy while we work."