Page 29 - Winter 2010

Fig. 5. High Intensity Noise Emulation Facility, circa 2008.
Fig. 6. Tower at the Aeroacoustic Research Complex (ARC).
research and development agreements with industry, interna- tional scientist and engineer exchange programs, and interna- tional data exchange and project agreements.
The group uses a variety of laboratories and equipment to conduct their programs of research and development. The major facilities include the Auditory Localization Facility, the Voice Communication Research and Evaluation System, the high intensity noise emulation facility, the Aeroacoustic Research Complex (ARC), advanced speech perception laboratory, and the Integrated Visualization Platform. The latter is unique in that part of it is located in the AFRL acoustics building and the other part is located at Wright State University, and enables advanced auditory interface development and assessment in distributed virtu- al environments. The Integrated Visualization Platform is owned and operated by Wright State University (WSU), and daytaOhio.
Auditory Localization Facility (ALF)—Fig. 4
• 4.26-meter-diameter geodesic sphere inside an ane-
choic chamber
• 277 loudspeakers
• Simulates complex real-world auditory environments
• Can present 16 sounds simultaneously from selected
or all locations
• Research in spatial hearing and virtual auditory dis-
play technologies
High Intensity Noise Emulation Facility—Fig. 5
• Capable of generating broadband noise environments
up to 142 dB SPL
• Supports development of advanced active noise
reduction technologies
• Supports establishment of noise exposure criteria for
intense noise fields
• Used to assess speech intelligibility in intense noise fields
Aeroacoustics Research Complex—Fig. 6
• Dedicated facility for
acoustic measurements of fixed and rotary winged aircraft for determining the noise source characteristics in-flight
• 2 - 300 ft towers, 800 ft apart
• 56 - microphones and data acquisition channels
• 5 - meteorological systems
• Low ambient background
noise (< 20dB SPL(A))
• Supports research on in- flight source noise, weather effects on noise propagation
Advanced Speech Perception Laboratory—Fig. 7
• Stimulus generation system capable of driving a
reconfigurable array of up to 21 loudspeakers
• Up to 21 acoustic sources can be presented simulta-
neously
• Located inside an anechoic chamber with a low fre-
quency cut-off at 150 Hz
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Acoustics at the Air Force Research Laboratory 25