Refurbishing the Large Anechoic Room

The Large Anechoic Chamber at the ISVR, University of Southampton is currently being refurbished. It was last refurbished in 1995/6 when more than 8,000 original non-flammable polyurethane wedges were replaced with glass-fibre cored wedges. Now in April 2022 it is being refurbished again, with new polyurethane foam wedges.

This is one of the largest anechoic chambers in the country and is used for both research and consultancy projects.

This photo shows the chamber before work started...

The glass fibre wedges were quickly removed...

... and temporarily stored in the adjacent Reverberant Chamber ...

... before being taken away ...

... to leave the chamber with bare walls and ceiling, not seen since 1996.

Without wedges the bare chamber is 9.15 m × 9.15 m × 7.32 m, with a volume of 611 cubic metres. Before the wedges were removed, the usable space between the wedges was 7.33 m × 7.33 m × 5.50 m, giving a usable volume of 295 cubic metres, which will be restored on completion.

Our website shows details of the Large Anechoic Chamber before refurbishment at https://isvr.co.uk/archive/large-anechoic/

The next stage will be the fitting of the new wedges and new floor, and we will keep you updated on progress.

Thanks to John Fithyan, our Laboratory Manager, for sharing this selection of photographs. We expect the anechoic and reverberant chambers to be restored to normal use around the end of May or beginning of June.

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