Buenos Aires 5 to 9 September 2016

st
Acoustics for the 21 Century

PROCEEDINGS of the 22nd International Congress on Acoustics

PP Psychological and Physiological Acoustics: FIA2016-37

Noise on an aircraft cabin: Effect of power density

spectrum on the noisiness
Hugo Scagnetti(a), Shin-ichi Sato(b), Florent Masson(c)
(a)

Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Argentina, hugoscagnetti@hotmail.com

(b)
Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Argentina, ssato@untref.edu.ar
(c)
Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Argentina, fmasson@untref.edu.ar

Abstract
The aim of this paper is to determine the correlation between different acoustic descriptors
related to power density spectrum and perceived noisiness in sounds recorded inside a
propeller aircraft cabin. Particularly, it is sought to demonstrate a strong correlation between
tonal components of a signal and its noisiness. For this purpose, a paired comparison test was
conducted with 26 test subjects and 8 stimuli. In order to exclude the effect of the sound
pressure level on the noisiness, the LAeq of all the signals used in the test were adjusted to 64
dBA. The results of the analysis showed a strong correlation between the numbers of tonal
components with the perceived noisiness. It was also found that the amplitude of the 500 Hz
tone has a great contribution to the perception of noisiness. Moreover, it was found that at
higher frequencies that 3000 Hz, the amplitude of the tonal components has a lesser effect on
the perception of noisiness.
Keywords: noisiness, aircraft, tonal, frequency

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Noise on an aircraft cabin: Effect of power density

spectrum on the noisiness
1 Introduction
Technological progress in transportation seeks to increase the safety and comfort of
passengers. Particularly in aircrafts, various environmental factors like noise and vibrations
affect health and comfort of passengers and crew. These environmental factors are noise and
vibration. In several works, it has been studied the influence of the equivalent sound pressure
level (Leq), the maximum levels and components of high and low frequencies on passenger
comfort.
Penning et al. found that at equal sound pressure level (SPL), the passengers feel most
comfortable when they are exposed to noise patterns prevailing in the rear section of the cabin
[1]. More precisely, they found that the passenger comfort was different according to the
frequency spectra. Their test was realized by a short-haul flight simulation. The noise,
vibrations, movements, lighting, and others environmental factors affect the cabin crews
comfort, performance and health [2]. Also, other studies linking degree of discomfort with the
frequency spectrum of the noise particularly, traffic noise, found that even under the same
exposure level of LAeq, the annoyance increases as the high frequency component increases [3].
On the other hand, Jones et al. confirmed that low frequency create more discomfort, mainly
due to sleep disturbance [4].
Several works link the spectral content in low or high frequencies with perceived discomfort
inside an aircraft cabin. However, few works mention the effect of tonal components of the
signal. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze the noisiness of an aircraft sound, with
and without tonal components, when the LAeq is maintained constant. The term "noisiness"
refers to the specific sound quality. Then two different sounds at the same noise level may not
be equally noisy [5]. This study correlates the noisiness and number of tonal components with
their frequencies to establish the basis for further works that correlates tonal components and
comfort in flight situation. Also, it investigates other objective parameters related to power
density spectrum and its correlation with the noisiness.
To carry out the work, a noise recorded in a cabin of propeller plane was used. To create the
stimuli, the signal was filtered with different bandstop filters designed in specific software.
Subsequently the results of the samples collected were analyzed, thereby obtaining a
correlation between different objective parameters and perceived noisiness. In order to obtain
the correlation between the subjective and objective parameters, a paired comparison test was
conducted with the signals obtained by the different bandstop filters.

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2 Procedure
2.1

Signal and filtering

An aircraft noise inside a cabin was obtained from the sound library Airborne Sound [6]. The
recording was made in stereo during a flight of a propeller airplane (Figure 1). The sampling
frequency of the signal is 44.1 kHz and the resolution is 16 bits. From this signal, a 10 s excerpt
was extracted to make the stimuli. Figure 2 shows the frequency response in 1/3 octave bands.

Figure 1: Aircraft noise recorded in a cabin to create the stimuli.

Figure 2: Frequency response of the original aircraft noise signal.

In order to eliminate unnecessary spectrum contents, the signal was first filtered by a lowpass
filter with cutoff frequency at 10 kHz (Figure 3). Then a bandstop filter was applied to the signal
to eliminate each tonal component. Figure 4 shows an example of the bandstop filter response
at 6300 Hz. Table 1 shows the eight stimuli used for the subjective test with their filtered

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frequencies. The frequency response of the stimuli is shown in Figure 4. Once the stimuli filtred,
their LAeq level was adjusted at 64 dBA.

Figure 3: Response of the lowpass filter (10 kHz).

Figure 4: Example of the bandstop filter to eliminate a tonal component.

Table 1: Stimuli used for the test.

Stimuli

Tonal components filtered [Hz]

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H

Original signal
500
1000
3150
6300
500 and 1000
500, 1000 and 3150
500, 1000, 3150 and 6300

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Figure 4: Spectrum of the eight test stimuli. The symbols a-h correspond to the stimuli in Table 1.

2.2

Objective parameters

The following parameters were calculated in order to examine a correlation with the noisiness:
1) amplitude of tonal component, 2) tonal ratio, and 3) number of tonal components. The
amplitude of tonal component (Amp X) is the amplitude of the tonal component centered at X

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Hz, where X is 500, 1000, 3150 or 6300 Hz. The tonal ratio definition is similar to the Total
Harmonic Distortion. The equation (1) shows the formula to obtain the tonal ratio.

(1)

where Ai is the amplitude of the i-th tonal component and Aj is the amplitude of the j-th tonal
component. It shows a relationship between the amplitude of a tonal component and the sum of
squared amplitudes of the remaining tonal components. The number of tonal components is the
quantity of tonal components present in the sample to be evaluated. Table 2 shows the values
of each objective parameter calculated for each stimulus evaluated.
Table 2: Correlation between noisiness and objective parameters.
Amplitude of tonal components
[dBFS]

Tonal ratio

Number of tonal
components

Stimulus

Amp
500

Amp
1000

Amp
3150

Amp
6300

500
Hz

1000
Hz

3150
Hz

6300
Hz

-34.60

-45.00

-43.10

-54.50

0.49

3.55

2.79

10.97

-47.60

-44.70

-42.80

-54.20

2.28

1.47

1.02

5.22

-34.60

-50.90

-43.10

-54.50

0.42

7.01

2.71

10.67

D
E

-34.60
-34.60

-45.00
-45.00

-66.80
-43.10

-54.50
-66.80

0.32
0.48

3.33
3.54

42.75
2.78

10.33
45.23

3
3

-47.60

-50.70

-42.80

-54.20

1.93

2.94

0.75

4.54

G
H

-47.60
-47.60

-50.50
-50.50

-66.35
-66.35

-54.11
-65.35

0.87
0.74

1.55
1.42

11.41
10.71

2.61
9.53

1
0

2.3

Subjective test

The test was performed in the Agencia de Proteccin Ambiental of Buenos Aires City. A quiet
office was selected. The background noise level was measured with a sound level meter 01 dBBlack Solo. The background noise was lower than 45 dBA. To reproduce the signals a Sony
MDR-ZX100 headphones and a personal computer with its sound interface were used.
In total 26 subjects (20-40 years old; 9 men and 17 women) with normal hearing participated in
the test. Their average flight number in a year is two (round trip). In a paired comparison test,
the subjects were asked to mark an X on a sheet for the sound that was perceived noisier. All
28 possible pairs (N(N-1)/2, N = 8) were used in the test. All the stimuli were presented
randomly to each subject. In order to avoid the fatigue of subjects, the test lasted 8 min for each
subject.

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3 Results
3.1

Paired comparison test

The validation of the test process was made according to the methods described in [7-11]. First
the consistency of each subject was evaluated by counting the circular triads. The average of
circular triad ratio for 26 participants was 0.206. Thus, the scale value was calculated with the
responses of the 20 listeners whose ratio was lower than 0.2. The test of agreement showed a
significant agreement among the responses of the 20 subjects selected (p < 0.05). Figure 5
presents the results of scale value. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that the effect of
tonal components on the scale value of noisiness was significant (F(7,152) = 35.3 > F(0.05) =
2.07, p < 0.05) as shown in Table 3.

Figure 5: Scale Value of noisiness (20 subjects).

Table 3: Results of the Analysis of Variance.

Sum of
Square

DF

Mean
Square

F-Ratio

Probability

Factor

318.1

45.4

35.3

< 0.05

Error

195.6

152

1.29

Total

513.8

159

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3.2

Correlation between objective and subjective parameters

Table 4 shows the correlation coefficient between each objective parameter and the scale value
of noisiness. The highest correlation was observed between the number of tonal components
and noisiness perceived (r = 0.94, p < 0.01), confirming the hypothesis of the study. Also, the
amplitude of the tonal component for 500 Hz was significantly correlated with the noisiness (r =
0.82, p < 0.01). However, it can be seen that as the frequency increases, the correlation
between the amplitude of tonal component and noisiness decreases. In principle the latter
observation would contradict the previous studies. However, those studies evaluated the
annoyance, not the noisiness. A strong correlation (r = 0.70, p < 0.05) was also observed
between the tonal ratio for 1000 Hz and the noisiness perceived while the tonal ratio for the
other frequencies showed much less correlation.
Table 4 Pearson correlation coefficient between objective parameters and scale value of
noisiness.
Objective parameter

Correlation coefficient

Amp 500

0.82**

Amp 1000

0.56

Amp 3150

0.57

Amp 6300

0.29

Tonal ratio 500

-0.27

Tonal ratio 1000

0.70*

Tonal ratio 3150

0.05

Tonal ratio 6300

0.24

Number of tonal components

0.94**

** p < 0.01, *p<0.05

4 Conclusions
According to the results obtained, the sounds with more tonal components could be perceived
noisier than those with fewer tonal components. Furthermore, the effect of the tone amplitude
on the noisiness might be lower as the frequency component becomes higher.
The relationship between the amplitude of the tonal component centered on 1000 Hz with
respect to the sum of the energy of remaining components, might have an important effect on
the perception of noisiness. Moreover, tonal ratio was found to be a criterion that might be
useful to assess the noisiness although it should be studied in more detail in future work.
A high correlation has been found between the number of tonal components and the degree of
discomfort that passengers feel. This topic should be studied in further works, particularly in
controlled environments simulating a normal flight situation.

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