The cooling capacity of the thermo active building system combined with acoustic ceiling

This paper describes measurements in a test facility of the cooling capacity of the thermo active building system (TABS) combined with acoustic ceiling. Generally it has been expected that in order to maintain sufficient cooling capacity from the mainly radiant heat transfer, the concrete ceiling must be exposed directly to the room.

This in practice would therefore impede the use of TABS in open plan offices, where acoustic ceilings are needed to ensure acceptable acoustic conditions. In this work, we have made measurements in a room equipped with TABS combined with an acoustic ceiling covering parts of the ceiling, so that both the acoustic and thermal requirements could be met.

In the measurements 35%, 47%, 67% (two different patterns), 70% 83% and 100% were covered as well as different configurations using baffles. Both thermal (all configurations) and acoustic properties (some of them) were tested. The results showed that even with a covering of 83% of the ceiling surface area, the cooling capacity was still around 70% of the uncovered ceiling at the same time as the reverberation time in the room was acceptable.

This shows that it is possible to combine acoustic ceilings and TABS.