Comfort studies on aircraft interior sound and vibration

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The current research which originated from the BRITE EURAM project IDEA PACI (BE97-4056) addressed the effects of combined sound and vibration (vibro-acoustics) on comfort sensation in aircraft. In the first study, seven cruising situations were presented in an aircraft mock-up and rated by 117 subjects using 15 polarities of a semantic differential. Principal component analyses proved that evaluations could be described by the perceptional dimensions of (vibro-acoustic) comfort, variation and tonality. As a bipolar dimension of semantic, perceptional space, vibro-acoustic comfort represented a kind of subjective well-being induced under optimal conditions. The evaluations on the perceptional dimensions of (vibro-acoustic) comfort and variation were significantly correlated with acoustic, psychoacoustic and vibration parameters. Two cruising situations were systematically varied in sound pressure level and vibration magnitude (3 x 3 design) and implemented as stimuli in the second experimental study using a 'sound and vibration reproduction system'. Thirty subjects using the same SD assessed each configuration. Analyses of variance indicated that the vibro-acoustic comfort evaluation depended on the significant 'additive' interaction between sound and vibration level. The sound pressure level contributed approximately 70% and the vibration magnitude about 30% to the comfort assessment. engl.