A proposed IFC extension for timber construction buildings to enable acoustics simulation

More and more architects and planners are choosing timber in construction because of its sustainability. However, timber elements have low mass, consist of multi-layered structures, and require complex junctions which makes the design process and construction challenging. The design of the junctions influences the sound insulation quality of a building and affects the quality of life for the inhabitants. To save time and cost, the detailed information on junctions should be included already in the early phases of the design process. In this paper, we present an improved building information modelling (BIM) workflow for timber construction. We develop new entities, relations, and property sets with detailed information on junctions that can be included in a BIM model using Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). These improvements will allow the designers to incorporate an acoustic data model that forms the basis for further prognoses of the airborne and impact sound insulation already in early design phases which in turn will reduce time and cost, and improve the quality of the design and the overall design process.