Psychoacoustic evaluation of different rumble strip designs

The purpose of rumble strips is to alert the driver through noise and vibration before running o the road. As a side e ect, rumble strips cause noise and thus annoyance in the surrounding areas. The noise emission depends on parameters such as the shape and the depth of the groove as well as the spacing. The aim of the work presented was to evaluate di erent design parameters of rumble strips in terms of exterior and interior noise as well as the degree of vibration on the seat and the steering wheel. For this, indoor and outdoor recordings using a head-and-torsosimulator were performed for a car and a commercial vehicle running on various test strips. Furthermore, using recordings and the boundary element method synthetic stimuli were produced for strips that could not be manufactured on the test track. In a lab experiment annoyance of outdoor noise as well as perceived urgency and reaction time were evaluated based on 16 listeners. The investigation lead to no clear optimal solution, in particular due to the large di erence of the e ect inside the car compared to the inside the commercial vehicle, where vibration as well as sound level increase were much lower.