Seminar by Thibaut Marin-Cudraz

Impact of tyre rolling noise: from acoustic space to physiological response

Road traffic noise accounts for the majority of perceived urban environmental noise and has important health consequences. The rolling noise of vehicle tires is a major contributor to perceived road noise. The tread pattern of light vehicle tires is already designed to minimize the amplitude of the noise emitted, but this is not the case for heavy vehicles. The European LEON-T project aims to minimize the nuisance of heavy vehicle tires, especially noise. Prior to a study of the effects of tire noise on sleep, we conducted several experiments: we determined the timbre parameters used by listeners to differentiate tire noises. We then synthetized different combinations of those parameters and asked participants to self-assess the unpleasantness they felt when listening to these sounds. Finally, we synthetized traffic exposure conditions from the artificial tire pass-by noises and asked participants to rate the annoyance they felt when exposed to the traffic noise during a short relaxing task (reading, crosswords…). Throughout the exposures, we measured several physiological parameters and ask them to self-assess their fatigue.