A new lightweight partition made with cork and gypsum board

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present an indigenous material (cork) in aninnovative design approach for housing. The building construction development inPortugal has been changed by the very slow but gradual move to a general use ofpartitions made with increasingly light materials from the traditional heavy interiorwalls. A socioeconomic analysis of the Portuguese situation as it is concerned withthe lodging policies and building construction industry, is briefly presented andconfronted to 37 other countries. An international comparison on this matter isshown using some economic parameters. The main goal of this paper is to present astudy of the acoustical behavior of lightweight partitions, especially those usuallycalled sandwich-type and its experimental application to a new and very specifickind of partition made of gypsum board and cork, a traditional material in Portugal.This newly developed sandwich lightweight partition is presented and acousticallycharacterized. A new and simple mathematical model is presented to evaluate thesound isolation of this kind of partition. The results obtained in reverberant chambertests are presented as well as the comparisons with the predicted values using thenew model proposed. Different single and double wall types were tested giving STCvalues up to 44 dB.