Experimental studies of loudness and annoyance response to sonic booms

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the most recent sonic boom laboratory studies performed at NASA-LaRC using the Sonic Boom Simulator. The first used synthesized idealized outdoor boom shapes which were filtered to represent booms heard inside a house. The test explored the efficacy of various metrics in assessing both loudness and annoyance responses to these booms. The second test investigated the effects of adding single reflections to idealized boom signatures, and the third compared booms recorded from real aircraft with idealized boom signatures to determine if subjects rated the real booms differently. In these studies, as in previous studies performed at NASA-LaRC, there was a continuing effort to evaluate metrics for predicting the subjective effects of sonic booms.