Experimental determination of the acoustical effects of face masks on speech effort
Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
1-1-2021
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a global trend in mask wearing. This study investigates how wearing face masks attenuate sound in the human speech range. Masks were equipped onto a test fixture to evaluate acoustic insertion loss over whole-octave bands important for vocal transmission. With the exception of face shield, tested masks showed less than 2 dB of insertion loss at frequencies less than 2 kHz and up to 5 dB of attenuation at frequencies above 2 kHz. The face shield showed insertion loss of more than 10 dB in the 4 and 8 kHz octave bands.
Publication Title
Proceedings of INTER-NOISE 2021 - 2021 International Congress and Exposition of Noise Control Engineering
ISBN
9781732598652
Recommended Citation
Schumaker, N.,
&
Barnard, A.
(2021).
Experimental determination of the acoustical effects of face masks on speech effort.
Proceedings of INTER-NOISE 2021 - 2021 International Congress and Exposition of Noise Control Engineering.
http://doi.org/10.3397/IN-2021-3510
Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/michigantech-p/15546