Psychoacoustic Evaluation of Hydraulic Pumps

Abstract

In this study, sound measurements of an axial piston pump and an internal gear pump were performed and subjective pleasantness judgements were collected in listening tests (to analyze the subjective pleasantness), which could be seen as the inverse of the subjective annoyance of hydraulic drives. Pumps are the dominant sound source in hydraulic systems. The noise generation of displacement machines is subject of current research. However, in this research only the sound pressure level (SPL) was considered. Psychoacoustic metrics give new possibilities to analyze the sound of hydraulic drive technology and to improve the sound quality. For this purpose, instrumental measurements of the acoustic and psychoacoustic parameters are evaluated for both pump types. The recorded sounds are played back to the participants in listening tests. Participants evaluate them regarding the subjective pleasantness by means of paired comparison, which is an indirect scaling method. The dependence of the subjective pleasantness on speed and pressure was analyzed for both pump types. Different regression analyses were carried out to predict the subjectively perceived pleasantness or annoyance of the pumps. Results show that a lower speed is the decisive operating parameter for reducing both the SPL and the annoyance of a hydraulic pump.