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Description
The building sector is confronted with two key challenges: minimizing the environmental impacts while ensuring occupants well-being. In this context, the use of sustainable materials with high thermal and acoustical performances appears as a necessity. Therefore, raw earth appears as a strategic low-carbon material, as it is naturally abundant, locally available and renewable. It also offers interesting thermal properties to improve summer comfort, thus impacting the energy efficiency and comfort of buildings.The main objective of the CarAc’Terre project is to remove regulatory and normative obstacles to raw earth construction techniques relative to acoustics. A multi-scale methodology for characterizing the acoustic performance of raw earth construction systems is proposed using both a performance-based and a perceptual approach. Measurements are carried out at the material, wall as well as building scale, such that contributions from materials formulation, walls composition, system type, as well as construction implementation can be investigated. This paper describes sound insulation results obtained on different types of raw earth based walls and floors. Comparison between predicted and measured acoustic performance, in terms of sound insulation (and impact sound level for floor systems), is also presented and discussed in detail. Based on this analysis, guidance for a quick evaluation of the acoustic performance to system not tested in laboratory is briefly introduced.