Study on the Effect of Partition Heights in Open Plan Office to the Privacy and Distraction Level Utilizing Computational Fluid Dynamics

Open-plan office is a room designed without the use of full-height partitions to isolate a workstation from other workstations. Speech privacy is one of the acoustical problems related with communication activities of the workers. Previous studies have shown that there are several sound phenomena that were unable to be explored using computer simulation based on ray tracing method. This paper is attempted to find the influence of partition height of various designs to the privacy level based on computational fluid dynamic, especially using the acoustics diffusion equation method. The results show that variation of height partitions can lower sound pressure level value by 5% - 6%, variation of absorption coefficient can lower SPL value by 8% - 9%, and adding furniture as book shelves does not change the open-plan office privacy level significantly.