AIRCRAFT NOISE EVALUATION

Abstract : The Federal Aviation Administration, in response to Public Law 90- 411, has begun the rule making process leading to the certification of aircraft for noise. The basic element in the regulation criteria is the noise evaluation measure designated as effective perceived noise level, EPNL, which is a single number evaluator of the subjective effects of aircraft noise on human beings. Simply stated, EPNL consists of instantaneous perceived noise level corrected for tones and duration. The history of the development of EPNL is presented and a critical evaluation of its validity is made. The computational procedures are described in detail including both integration and approximate methods for calculating duration corrections. Examples are given in the appendices.