The assessment of aircraft noise annoyance from flight activities using the perceived noise metrics

Abstract

Aircraft noise is an environmental noise that affects humans both mentally and physically. Although the aircraft is currently being developed to have a lighter sound. However, those noises cause an increase in adverse effects in vicinity nearby airports because of aviation activities both taking off and the landing can make louder sound. The research has tended to focus on the auditory exposure of the test participants which has the sound of an airplane while takeoff and landing scenarios. The semantic differential scale is a type of survey rating scale used for psychoacoustic measurement. A researcher develops a survey questionnaire allowing a respondent to express an annoyance judgment, using a scale of ten points. It helps to get to know the participant's perspectives with perceive noise metrics. The metrics consist of Noisiness, Loudness, and EPNL that are specific measurement associated with aircraft noise. In the experiment, a total of 18 sound files were generated from different flight scenarios both takeoff and landing with 3 replicates. The Noisiness metric was used as a criterion to optimize all sound files that were adjusted Noisiness at about 70, 80, and 90 PNdB. The difference noises between takeoff and landing on which activities are more likely to affect human annoyance. As a result, people are more annoyed by the noise from the takeoff than the landing. In addition, a study was conducted to determine the Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) of the perceived noise metrics, comprising Loudness, Noisiness, and EPNL, with the level of people's annoyance to aircraft noise during flight activity. The results showed that the Noisiness (r=0.74) and EPNL (r=0.74) metrics were appropriate more than Loudness matric (r=0.69) to assess human annoyance from aircraft.