Interdisciplinary Auralization of Take-off and Landing Procedures for Subjective Assessment in Virtual Reality Environments

Abstract

The issue of aircraft noise experienced by residents in the airport’s neighborhoods is one of subjective annoyance and a presentation of noise intensity in decibels alone might not be sufficient to give a clear understanding of noise abatement measures being carried out or the effect for instance of constructing a new runway at an airport. Although noise contours can be a great way of a quick assessment of noise impact over larger areas, noise quantified in numbers can prove lacking in capturing the actual annoyance caused by the noise to the residents. For this reason, a method providing a more subjective assessment of aircraft noise impact is required and auralization of complete aircraft movements could be one such way of better capturing the annoyance due to noise caused by aircraft. The Virtual Air Traffic System Simulation (VATSS) interdisciplinary project of RWTH Aachen University has the aim of presenting the effect of complete aircraft movements via visualization and auralization of aircraft noise in 3-D Virtual Reality environments for the subjective assessment of aircraft noise. This paper focusses on the interdisciplinary collaboration of the Institute of Aerospace Systems and the Institute of Technical Acoustics of RWTH Aachen to produce a capability of auralizing complete time-dependent take-off and landing procedures up to an altitude of 3000 meters. The noise produced by a conventional aircraft with a turbofan engine is modeled and the ILR’s capability to model aircraft noise for complete 4-D take-off and landing procedures is shown along with the technique to auralize complete standard procedures as well as noise abatement procedures with time-varying settings. Both broadband and tonal noise components for dominant sources are auralized for the movements.