Bioacoustic’s anthropometric manikins for acoustic research.

Abstract

Bioacoustic’s anthropometric manikins for acoustic research (BAMAR) are being developed for use as surrogate humans in selected types of acoustics measurements. Some of the applications targeted for this capability are measurements of sound attenuation of helmet, earmuff, and earplug hearing protection devices, voice communications effectiveness, sound/noise measurement, and transducer design/evaluations. The manikin heads are high fidelity anthropometric replicas of human subjects chosen to represent average, ±1, and ±2 standard deviation head sizes. The BAMAR set consists of ten manikin heads including pinnae and external ear canals fabricated with artificial flesh. The manikins are instrumented with appropriate measurement transducers. The approach involves validation of performance by directly comparing performance of the human subject with that of his/her own manikin. The procedure for creating the manikins, the rationale, and the progress of the developmental effort will be discussed. Sound attenuation data will be presented for the human subject and for the corresponding manikin.