The proposed realignment and expansion of the Beaver Stadium student section for the 2011 season should create a louder atmosphere during games, Penn State researchers say.

With the student section set to move from its current range of seats between the ED section and past the tunnel to the seats between the EA and WA sections, researchers say louder sounds from a more condensed area should reverberate through the stadium.

Andrew Barnard is a senior research assistant at Penn State's Applied Research Laboratory and an acoustics Ph.D. candidate. He and his team of graduate students and professors were brought into Beaver Stadium by the Penn State athletic department three times in the last three years to measure noise levels.

They were at the Nittany Lions' 2007 game against Ohio State and the team's games this season against Iowa and Ohio State.

Using sound level meters -- handheld microphones that measure sound pressure levels -- the group would measure sound every 10 seconds during the loudest parts of the game in front of the student section by the 10-yard line. At games this year, Barnard said, the volume reached as high as 110 decibels.

Sustained exposure to decibel levels between 90 and 95 could result in hearing loss.

Looking to gauge what could make Beaver Stadium louder, Penn State asked the group to make predictions of what crowd noise levels would be in different areas.

"Everyone talks about stadium noise," Barnard said. "But there are not a lot of calibrated measurements."

In the current configuration, Barnard said noise from the student section on the east side of the stadium doesn't carry far over the field, falling short of the west side. The result, he said, is that the student section has little effect on opposing offenses lining up on the hashmarks near the west side.

Barnard projected that a student section wrapping around the south end zone -- as proposed for 2011 -- would uniformly distribute the sound across the field.

"Of course, students are louder than the other fans," Barnard said. "So you want to get the loudest fans as close to the field as possible."

Based on his group's findings, the upper decks on each end of Beaver Stadium would help push sound onto the field and reverberate throughout the complex.

But Barnard insisted that the choice to move the student section was the athletic department's.

"None of the information we gave them made that decision," he said.

Still, if his findings are true, the potential for a more boisterous atmosphere inside Beaver Stadium exists.

"There are no guarantees, but it looks like by taking the students that are in the upper sections of the east sidelines and moving them closer to the field by that end zone," Barnard said, "the noise on the field should be considerably louder, especially on the west side of the stadium."