INVESTIGATION OF INTEGRATION ACCURACY OF SOUND-POWER MEASUREMENT USING AN AUTOMATED SOUND-INTENSITY SYSTEM

Automated sound-intensity systems have been used routinely for indoor measurement of the sound power of earthmoving equipment and automobile s. The measurement surface is a hemisphere, with sound intensity on th e concrete floor assumed to be zero. The system automatically moves an array of sound-intensity probes over the hemisphere, making measureme nts at desired locations and computing the sound power when the measur ements are completed. With an automated system, the number and distrib ution of measurement positions and the starting position of rotation c an be changed without requiring much human labor. In the present paper , the effect on the integration accuracy of the number and distributio n of measurement positions and of the starting position of rotation is investigated, using an automated system to measure the sound power of a garden tractor and a motorcycle. Based on these results, guidelines are proposed for achieving good integration accuracy with an automate d system. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.