Temporal integration of partial loudness of helicopter-like sounds

Abstract

When developing new vehicles that are to be operated in existing background noise, such as electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOLs) in cities, a sound design goal should be to minimize the loudness in the given background noise. Rotorcraft sounds are characterised by their pulses, and the choice of rotor size and number allows to vary the temporal characteristics. We asked participants to compare the loudness of pulse trains with pulse durations of 1, 2, 5, 10 and 20 ms and a pulse rate of 20 Hz in a two-interval, two-alternatives forced choice task and a 1-up/1-down procedure. Street noise was presented simultaneously with the pulse trains, and had the same root-mean-square (RMS) level as the fixed reference pulse train of about 65 dB SPL. First results indicate that the sounds with a short pulse duration need considerably less RMS level to result in the same loudness as a long pulse duration, i.e. the partial loudness of shorter pulses is higher at the same equivalent sound pressure level.