Advantages of lightweight concrete for sound insulation demonstrated
Standards and national technical approvals provide a solid foundation for everyday work. This also applies to sound insulation, which is one of the most important health and safety objectives in building construction. The new version of DIN 4109 resulted in a significant updating last year.
The lightweight concrete block with integrated thermal insulation made by the company KLB, based in Andernach, Germany, now offers a technical brochure that explains the new regulations of the standard, points out the advantages specific to lightweight concrete, and illustrates as realistically as possible the actual construction possibilities. The brochure thus provides architects and technical planners with an important tool for preparing sound insulation verification.
Lightweight concrete with decibel bonus
Mass and bending stiffness crucially influence the sound-insulation properties of single-leaf wall construction. In this respect, lightweight concrete, owing to its porous structure and the aggregate used, stands out positively over other solid masonry blocks: the mass plots specified in the currently valid DIN 4109 provide, as a function of mass m‘ per unit area, a bonus of two decibels for the valuated sound insulation factor Row of lightweight concrete masonry. Lightweight concrete blocks accordingly combine extensive sound insulation with outstanding thermal insulation.
A special situation results from the changed DIN 4109 for masonry blocks filled with insulation material with density class below 0.8 kg/m³ and wall thickness over 24 cm. For these cases, the standard explicitly provides supplemental technical approvals that include the special acoustic properties of building products.
Special KLB approval for sound insulation
KLB lightweight concrete blocks with integrated thermal insulation have been approved by Deutsches Institut für Bautechnik, DIBt) – the official German approval body for construction products – in the form of approval Z-23.22-2074, which verifies sound insulation characteristics for lightweight concrete masonry with a fresh-density class below 0.8 kg/dm³ and wall thickness over 24 cm. For KLB masonry, sound-insulation verification – which takes account of a total of 13 airborne sound transmission paths – is now possible without restriction for every application.
“We have thus provided the basics for application of the new DIN 4109 for all our products by extensive test bench measurements,” declares KLB Managing Director Andreas Krechting. The brochure is rounded out by providing two sample sound insulation verifications.