Achieving Global Consensus on Acceptable Sound Levels for Overland Supersonic Flight

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has committed to deliver to the International Civil Aviation Organization's Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (CAEP) data defining community response to sounds from supersonic aircraft designed such that their sonic boom is replaced with a soft "thump". The dataset will correlate public perceptions to acoustic levels, supporting efforts to develop international standards for permissible noise from supersonic overflight. NASA is preparing for community overflight tests with the X-59, a research aircraft that generates the "sonic thump". For global consensus on standards, NASA seeks response data broadly representative of the response of the international population. NASA has engaged the international community through briefings at CAEP meetings and workshops with international participation. A virtual workshop in December 2021 focused on strategies for estimating noise exposure levels and conducting surveys to characterize annoyance levels relative to the "thump" sounds. An overview of NASA's effort, focusing on plans and technical goals for the community response tests is presented. Results of the workshop are briefed, including considerations for ensuring broad representativeness of results and estimation of the sound levels across the test community. Workshop feedback will be discussed, along with how it will be addressed in NASA's planning.