Acoustic aspects in the construction and upgrading of military firing ranges - Part 1

Military firing ranges are indispensable facilities to train armed forces in handling and use of small arms. In the past, such ranges were outdoor installations. Due to noise problems around some of these shooting ranges they will be replaced more and more by indoor shooting facilities, which increases the noise impact on the personnel. First, the design of shooting ranges must consider the internal and external firing safety. However, acoustics comes next. There are two different but equally important objectives. The facilities should be built in such a way that (1) the noise impact on the hearing of personnel and (2) the noise impact on the neighbourhood is as low as possible. The design of shooting ranges should already take these aspects into account during the planning phase. This article focusses on the topic of acoustic safety (1) and is divided into two parts. Part I: The first part describes the procedure acoustic safety and demonstrates how requirements for surfaces in planned facilities are determined from computer-aided calculations using ray tracing in combination with the AHAAH model.