A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF HUMAN RESPONSE, INDOORS, TO BLAST NOISE AND SONIC BOOMS

摘要

For the past two decades, blast sounds and sonic booms have been assessed in a like manner in the United States using C-weighted day-night average sound level, Recently, based almost exclusively on blast sound research, a new method which replaces the C-weighted day-night average sound level has been recommended and incorporated into a new American National Standard, In this new method, as in the previous method, sonic boom sounds are included and assessed in a like manner to blast sounds, However, while available evidence suggested that in an indoor setting sonic boom could be treated in a similar fashion to blast sounds, experimental evidence was lacking, The purpose of the study reported herein was to provide the lacking comparison data, The study tested if the responses of subjects to sonic booms were consistent with previous blast response data presented by Schemer, since these were the data which formed the basis for the new method, A key factor in the design of this study was the presentation of real blasts and booms to subjects situated in real structures in the field, The study was performed as a paired-comparison test with the same control sound being used in this study as had been used in all the previous blast research that formed the basis for the new assessment method, In this new study, 232 subjects each judged 20 booms and 30 blast sounds, The new data resulting from this study show good general agreement with the previous data reported by Schemer, However, there is an indication that for the same C-weighted sound exposure level, a boom is slightly more annoying than a blast. (C) 1997 Institute of Noise Control Engineering. [References: 17]