Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

When it comes to acoustic comfort of an aircraft, usual engineering metrics (based upon A-weighted Sound Pressure Levels or Speech Interference Levels) do not ""tell the whole story"". In this respect, it would be very useful to be able to ""hear"" the ambiance of an aircraft cabin before it flies, and ""hear"" the impact of planned modification or acoustic treatment before it is actually implemented. Similarly, sound reproduction in cockpit simulators is considered an essential component to a virtual environment that adds ambience, emotion, and a sense of presence to the simulation for pilot training. The objective of this project is to develop general methods and implement these methods to build an ""acoustic simulator"" that should emulate the acoustic environment of aircraft cabins and cockpits. Such a simulator would be based on arrays of reproduction loudspeakers and would provide a convincing virtual immersion experience (similar acoustic design philosophies are of growing importance in architecture and in the automotive sector). This platform will enable a program of systematic evaluation of human responses within the virtual environment. The outcome of the project is methodology, software and hardware for experimental sound field rendering of aircraft cabins and cockpits. The systems developed will provide both marketing and engineering design tools to help Bombardier advertise and improve the acoustic comfort of their business jet aircraft. On the other hand, it will help CAE improve their sound field rendering capability in cockpit simulators.