Influence of Chair Vibrations on Indoor Sonic Boom Annoyance

One goal of NASA’s Commercial Supersonic Technology Project is to identify candidate noise metrics suitable for regulating quiet sonic boom aircraft. A suitable metric must consider the short duration and pronounced low frequency content of sonic booms. For indoor listeners, rattle and creaking sounds and floor and chair vibrations may also be important. The current study examined the effect of such vibrations on the annoyance of test subjects seated indoors. The study involved two chairs exposed to nearly identical acoustic levels: one placed directly on the floor, and the other isolated from floor vibrations by pneumatic elastomeric mounts. All subjects experienced both chairs, sitting in one chair for the first half of the experiment and the other chair for the remaining half. Each half of the experiment consisted of 80 impulsive noises played at the exterior of the sonic boom simulator. When all annoyance ratings were analyzed together there appeared to be no difference in mean annoyance with isolation condition. When the apparent effect of transfer bias was removed, a subtle but measurable effect of vibration on annoyance was identified.