Design of a low frequency, impulsive sound simulator in an existing house for sonic boom perceptual studies

Abstract

The renewal of civil supersonic aviation is partly conditioned by the establishment of an international regulation on sonic boom level. Human perception of booms from future aircraft creating sound disturbances of lower level than past ones can currently be evaluated only through boom simulators in laboratory setups with predicted signatures from numerical simulations. To reach sufficient ecological validity, it is necessary that perception studies take place in an environment as familiar as possible to participants. With this in view, a simulator has been designed to reproduce sonic booms of low amplitude with the highest possible fidelity and control, while adapting to an existing house. The article presents the challenges and design solutions chosen to reach this objective. A double optimisation of the input signal, successively in the frequency and in the time domain, is described. Observed performances are presented for different boom exposures and in various rooms of the house.