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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
Currently, there is a ban on overland commercial supersonic flight over the U.S. Manufacturers of business jets believe that it is possible to build economically-viable supersonic aircraft that produce quieter sonic booms. In order to determine if these quieter sonic booms, called “low” booms, are less intrusive and the noise exposure is acceptable to communities, new human subject testing must occur. The aim of this research is to determine objective measures that predict human response to low sonic boom waveforms and other impulsive sounds. At the start of this research, it was found that startle was an important factor in predicting people's judgments of annoyance. Preliminary models of startle and annoyance were also developed. To examine startle in more depth, a series of experiments were conducted to examine how physiological measures associated with startle compare with subjective ratings and to examine the repeatability these are these measures. While physiological responses associated with startle were found, these responses rarely occurred. In addition, there were large subject-to-subject variations in observed physiological responses. The ramification of these results on startle model development and recent modeling efforts will also be discussed.
Host: Garrett Kenyon, gkenyon@lanl.gov, 7-1900