The discomfort produced by noise and whole-body vertical vibration presented separately and in combination

Abstract

This study investigated the prediction of the discomfort caused by simultaneous noise and vibration from the discomfort caused by noise and the discomfort caused by vibration when they are presented separately. A total of 24 subjects used absolute magnitude estimation to report their discomfort caused by seven levels of noise (70–88 dBA SEL), 7 magnitudes of vibration (0.146–2.318 ms^− 1.75) and all 49 possible combinations of these noise and vibration stimuli. Vibration did not significantly influence judgements of noise discomfort, but noise reduced vibration discomfort by an amount that increased with increasing noise level, consistent with a ‘masking effect’ of noise on judgements of vibration discomfort. A multiple linear regression model or a root-sums-of-squares model predicted the discomfort caused by combined noise and vibration, but the root-sums-of-squares model is more convenient and provided a more accurate prediction of the discomfort produced by combined noise and vibration.

Abstract

Practitioner Summary: The total discomfort produced by combined noise and vibration, ψ_c, can be well predicted from the root-sums-of-squares of the noise discomfort, ψ_s, and the vibration discomfort, ψ_v, when each stimulus is presented alone (i.e. ψ_c = [(ψ_v)²+(ψ_s)²]^0.5).

Keywords::

• whole-body vibration
• hearing, sound and noise
• transport ergonomics
• vehicle ergonomics
• general ergonomics