Role of Vibration and Rattle in Human Response to Helicopter Noise

摘要

Our understanding of community reaction to helicopter noise remains incomplete. A technique called 'A-weighting' appears to produce realistic data outdoors and at modest noise levels, and the community response in terms of percentage of population highly annoyed can be correlated with respect to the Day/Night Average Sound Level (DNL) descriptor. However, questions remain as to the effect of perceived building vibrations and rattle in human response to helicopter noise. To answer these questions, this study examined the role of vibration and rattle in human response to helicopter noise. Many volunteer subjects were tested under real noise conditions. The helicopter noise was generated by an Army UH-1H (Huey) helicopter. Subjects were located either in the living room of a new mobile home, outdoors, or in the living room or dining room of an old frame farmhouse near Champaign IL. The control or comparison sound was generated electronically through loudspeakers at each location using a 500-Hz octave band of white noise. By performing paired comparison tests between the helicopter and control noises, it was possible to establish equivalency between these two stimuli. (Author)