Spectral analysis of impulse noise for hearing conservation purposes.
Damage-risk criteria for impulse noise does not presently take the spectrum of the impulse into account; however, it is known that the human auditory system is spectrally tuned. The present paper advocates the extension to impulse noise of the noise dose concept which is widely used for continuous noise. This approach is based upon sound exposure instead of sound pressure. An A-weighting filter or an octave band analysis can then be used to take the spectral content of the impulses into account. The equipment needed for applying these procedures for impulse noise is an integrating sound level meter or a digital Fourier processor. Generalized spectral methods have been evaluated by means of an impulse simulation applied to a mathematical model of the human hearing mechanism. The results of this simulation agree with the most recent experiments on impulse noise and fully support the proposed rating methods. This conclusion must be emphasized as it leads the derivation of a uniform procedure for predicting loudness and damage risk for hearing which is applicable for continuous noise as well as for impulse noise.
D004781:Environmental Exposure; D005583:Fourier Analysis; D006317:Hearing Loss, Noise-Induced / Q000517:prevention & control; D006801:Humans; D009622:Noise / Q000009:adverse effects*; D012306:Risk; D013018:Sound Spectrography / Q000379:methods*