Main sensitivity drivers in indoor acoustic comfort for autistic individuals

Abstract

One challenge for railway noise predictions is to characterize noise from various auxiliary equipment, e.g., fans, compressors, transformers. The noise from such sources can be a dominating contribution under low speed operation or stand still. To better handle this problem the EU-project TRANSIT investigates improved methods for acoustic source characterization. As a starting point it is assumed that an acoustic source is enclosed by a control surface. The surface is sub-divided into smaller areas and each area is assumed to act as an acoustic one-port coupled to all the other areas. The properties of each area can then be described by its volume flow and internal impedance. The resulting acoustic pressure at a receiving point, can finally be expressed as a product of the source volume flows and a matrix representing the acoustic installation effects ("source+radiation impedances"). To simplify the method one can assume uncorrelated source surfaces and use an ISO procedure for sound power to determine the volume flows. The acoustic installation effects can be obtained using a monopole point source to measure or calculate the pressure at selected receiving positions. This simplified method has been validated under controlled laboratory conditions and tested on real equipment on trains.