Investigation of Noise Limitation Standardization and Evaluating the Low Frequency Noise's Influence on Human Performance using Online Psychoacoustic Test

TL;DR

This study reviews existing low frequency noise standards and uses online psychoacoustic testing to assess its impact on human performance, revealing current standards are insufficient to limit low frequency noise effects.

Contribution

It compares Chinese and international noise standards and introduces an online psychoacoustic testing method to evaluate low frequency noise influence on performance.

Findings

Low frequency noise negatively impacts human work performance.

Existing Chinese standards inadequately address low frequency noise.

Online psychoacoustic tests can effectively assess noise influence.

Abstract

A lot of research has been carried out to find out the influence of low frequency noise on human behavior. Based on currently available results, some countries have been developing National Standard to limit the low frequency noise to protect people's health and working performance. However, after investigating 28 National Standards about noise limitation of working machine and other noise emission standards of China, it is found that the stipulation of low frequency noise covers limited aspects. Most of the limitation used A-weight sound level as the evaluation index, which only presents the loudness perception of sound, not its influence. In this paper, two connected topics are presented. One is to investigate the Chinese National Standard and International Standard, in order to summarize all the noise limitation on low frequency noise. The second topic is the application of online psychoacoustic test to evaluate the influence of low frequency noise on human performance, which can enlarge the subjective testing sample size in order to facilitate the establishment of related National Standard. The online Hass effect experiment is repeated to verify the accuracy of online psychoacoustic test. The volunteers are asked to conduct several sessions of the colour identification problems under different kind of controlled noise. The accuracy and finishing time are taken into consideration to evaluate their performance under different kinds of noise. The results show that low frequency noise does affect humans' working performance and the existing Chinese Noise limitation Standards are inadequate in low frequency noise limitation.