A study on the conversion relationship of noise perceived annoyance and psychoacoustic annoyance—a case of substation noise

Abstract

The level of annoyance is an important basis to determine the acceptable degree of noise and develop noise standards. Psychoacoustic annoyance (PA) calculated by Zwicker’s model and perceived annoyance (such as mean annoyance, MA and the percentage of highly annoyed population, %HA) obtained through individual self-reports are widely used. PA and MA (or %HA) cannot be directly compared because the ranges of their values are different. Thus, the conversion relationship of PA and MA (or %HA) needs to be developed. As a case study, the model between PA and MA (or %HA) of substations noise was established and the rationality of model was verified. Results showed that the maximum value of the difference of MA (or %HA) between the calculation result of model and experimental result was less than 0.89 (or 15%). In this way, the perceived annoyance of substation noise samples can be determined by calculation without experiments.