Statistical energy analysis (SEA) has become a powerful tool in the aerospace, automotive, and industrial markets for approaching complex mid-high frequency vibro-acoustic problems, but has seen limited use in the architectural segment. However, building acoustics is actually an ideal problem for SEA, and in fact the widely used sabine equation can be thought of as an equivelent single degree-of-freedom SEA analysis. To demonstrate the applicability of modern tools, a full architectural Revit model of a multi-use commercial building was taken and imported into Wave6. With all Revit information available for access, a full-scale SEA model of the building was rapidly developed and evaluated. This high level SEA model allows for quick diagnosis of potentially problematic transmission or reverb time issues everywhere in the building. In addition, any room of particular interest can then be converted into a spatial-gradient SEA volume, allowing for the effect of room geometries, spatial impacts of treatments, or other detailed metrics to be calculated at any point in the room.
Tom Burns (Wed,) studied this question.