Objective

Current blast noise impact assessment procedures do not fully meet the military’s noise management needs. Blast noise is emitted by projectiles, explosives, and artillery and armor muzzle blast. These noise events are of short duration, typically a fraction of a second, with most of the acoustical energy concentrated at low frequencies (between 1 and 100 Hz). Blast noise, sometimes referred to as high-energy impulsive noise, is extremely variable due to the effects of weather and can be very loud at distances of many tens of kilometers. Blast noise impact has been assessed using procedures that follow standards developed to assess transportation noises. These assessment procedures predict the percentage of the community that will be highly annoyed as a function of long-term average noise level. This method has proven to be unsatisfactory for extremely variable blast military noise. Individual blast noise events can be loud enough to elicit noise complaints, yet when all of the events are averaged over a year’s time, the average noise level meets established acceptability criteria.

The objectives of this project are to enhance the understanding of community attitudes toward military blast noise and to develop a methodology for accurately predicting human response to military testing and training activities that produce blast noise. Specifically, this research aims to determine the relations between noise stimulus metrics and human response metrics and to recommend guidelines that can be universally used to sustain military training and testing capabilities as well as minimize noise impacts on residents of military installations and adjacent communities.