An experimental study on annoyance scale for assessment of wind turbine noise

Abstract

Wind turbine noise referred to as “swishing sound” causes annoyance due to the amplitude modulation of the noise aerodynamically generated from blades. For the propagation characteristic of sound emitted from blade, the noise can be heard differently from place to place. For that reason, many studies on numerical index evaluating annoyance caused by wind turbine noise have been examined. The results, however, showed little correlation with change of equivalent continuous sound pressure level. In the present study, twenty-eight stimuli created by numerical simulation for the test were provided and thirty-two subjects assessed noise-induced annoyance. Additionally, a correlation analysis between sound descriptors and subjective annoyance was performed by using regression analysis with SAS software. This study shows that the maximum sound pressure level with fast time A-weighting (LAFmax) explains well the annoyance characteristics compared to the other descriptors considered.