Cabin noise measurements with microphone arrays and sound intensity probes

Aircraft cabin noise measurements in flight are used to identify the noise sources and entry points of acoustic energy into the cabin and to quantify the respective noise levels. The aim of an ongoing project of the partners GfaI and DLR is to develop a handheld measurement system suitable for cabin noise in-flight measurements. In the current study an optical tracking system and two measuring principles of the sound intensity are combined in order to measure the sound intensity with focus of developing a MEMS microphone array based system. Suitable MEMS microphones were tested and calibrated and a MEMS microphone array was developed to measure the sound intensity.