Development of an advanced hearing protection evaluation system

Abstract

Acoustic Test Fixtures (ATFs) are practical and often necessary tools for testing Hearing Protection Devices (HPDs) especially with extremely loud impulsive and/or continuous noise, for which the use of live subjects might not be advisable. Although there have been various standardized and laboratory ATFs from past research, there still exists large uncertainty in the correlation between the attenuation results obtained from ATFs and those obtained from actual human subject tests, particularly for intraaural HPDs. It is suspected that one of the main factors contributing to the discrepancy may be insufficient fidelity in the circumaural/intraaural flesh and bone. Human subject testing was performed to obtain median parameters of ear canal geometry and eardrum reflectance, which are considered to be critical parameters for circumaural/intraaural HPD attenuation performance. This presentation discusses the research methodologies and design implementation of these important subsystems in this advanced Hearing Protection Evaluation System (HPES).