Flanking Sound Issues – Heavy structure Junction

Acoustic flanking paths aren’t always obvious, and may only show up later when doing measurements. In the sketch below a junction is seen with heavy slabs and load bearing heavy walls. While the horizontal airborne Sound reduction and impact noise May be good, as Well as the vertical impact noise, the vertical airborne Sound reduction Can showcase bad performance because of the vertical flanking path with corresponding critical frequencies of the walls.

Load bearing walls (if thin enough) can carry acoustic energy quite well (visualized by the red arrow-line), especially if their resonance frequencies match.

Imagine a similar effect as seen in tuning-forks.

A potential consequence of the acoustic coupling from the load bearing walls.

Remember to look for potential flanking paths and determine the effect, as it Can save the stress of having to mitigate the flanking path by adding Extra gypsum as seen on the left of the sketch.