Noise induced hearing loss mitigation via planning and engineering

Abstract

The US Navy, through an ONR lead effort, is investigating methods and techniques to mitigate hearing loss for the crews and warfighters. Hearing protection is a viable and increasingly popular method of reducing hearing exposure for many ship crew members; however, it has limitations on comfort and low frequency effectiveness, and is often used improperly. Proper naval vessel planning, programmatic changes, and advances in noise control engineering can also have significant impacts by inherently reducing noise exposure through ship design along with the use of passive noise control treatments. These impacts go beyond hearing loss mitigation since they can improve quality of life onboard vessels and provide enhanced warfighter performance. Such approaches also can be made to work in the lower frequency range where hearing protection is not as effective. This paper describes the programmatic and noise control methods being pursued to mitigate and control noise within the US Navy and US Marine Corps. Methodologies to assess the cost impact are also discussed.