EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION OF THE SONIC BOOM EFFECT ON THE HUMAN FUNCTIONAL CONDITION AND OPERATOR’S ACTIVITY

The experiment was devoted to justification of the hygienic standards for sonic booms by modeling effects of the 105 dB sound produced by a supersonic aircraft. Subjective perception and accessibility were assessed along with instrumental measurements of reactions of the hearing and balance organ, cardiovascular, respiratory and nervous systems, and operator’s efficiency. It was found that subjectively the sonic boom was perceived as 21 % less loud than a similar broad-band noise. The number of very annoyed people made up 85 % which is 50 % more than in reaction to a 70 dB constant noise. Three booms within 20 minutes caused transient changes in the eardrum, acoustic reflex threshold, resonance frequency in the external auditory meatus and vestibular analyzer functioning that disappeared within 24 hours. The hypothesized physiological mechanism of these boom effects on the organ of hearing and balance resides in the otolithic receptor perception of low-frequency oscillations.