Technical & Applied Article

Uncertainties of ISO 3382-3 sound pressure level quantities

Institute for Occupational Safety and Health of the German Social Accident Insurance (IFA), 53757 Sankt Augustin, Germany

^* Corresponding authors: moritz.schneider@dguv.de; jan.selzer@dguv.de

Received: 9 September 2020
Accepted: 30 May 2021

Abstract

The ISO 3382-3 standard uses the measurable sound pressure based parameters D_2,S and L_{p,A,S,4 m} to describe the acoustic properties of open-plan offices. As yet however, no treatment of the measurement uncertainty of these parameters according to the Guide to the expression of Uncertainty in Measurement (GUM) is to be found in the peer-reviewed literature. This technical note therefore describes how the measurement uncertainty can be declared according to GUM. The mathematical framework presented here can be used and expanded by other laboratories to derive their own uncertainty estimates. It is also applied in this document to 44 measurements yielding combined uncertainties for D_2,S of 0.55 dB ≤ ${\sigma }_{c,D_{2,\mathrm{S}}}$ ≤ 0.67 dB and for L_{p,A,S,4 m} of 0.19 dB ≤ ${\sigma }_{c,L_{p,\mathrm{A},\mathrm{S},4\mathrm{m}}}$ ≤ 0.83 dB. The implications of this result are discussed with regard to limit values in technical regulations.