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The objective of this study was to investigate if 3D auditory displays could be used to enhance parking assistance systems (PAS). Objective measurements and estimations of workload were used to assess the benefits of different 3D auditory displays. In today’s cars, PAS normally use a visual display together with simple sound signals to inform drivers of obstacles in close proximity. These systems rely heavily on the visual display, as the sound does not provide information about obstacles' location. This may cause the driver to lose focus on the surroundings and reduce situational awareness. Two user studies (during summer and winter) were conducted to compare three different systems. The baseline system corresponded to a system normally found in today’s cars. The other systems were designed with a 3D auditory display, conveying information of where obstacles were located through sound. A visual display was also available. Both normal parking and parallel parking was conducted.

Many of the information systems in cars require visual attention, and a way to reduce both visual and cognitive workload could be to use sound. An experiment was designed in order to determine how driving and secondary task performance is affected by the use of information sound signals and their spatial positions. The experiment was performed in a driving simulator utilizing Lane Change Task as a driving scenario in combination with the Surrogate Reference Task as a secondary task. Two different signal sounds with different spatial positions informed the driver when a lane change should be made and when a new secondary task was presented. Driving performance was significantly improved when both signal sounds were presented in front of the driver. No significant effects on secondary task performance were found. It is recommended that signal sounds are placed in front of the driver, when possible, if the goal is to draw attention forward.

Subjects who are well aware of what to judge commonly yield more consistent results in laboratory listening tests. This awareness may be raised by explicit instructions and training. However, too explicit instructions or use of only trained subjects may direct experiment results in an undesired way. An alternative is to give fairly open instructions to untrained subjects, but give the subjects a chance to get familiar with the product and context by, for example, riding a representative car under representative driving conditions before entering the laboratory. In this study, sound quality assessments of interior sounds of cars made by two groups were compared. In one group subjects were exposed to the same driving conditions that were later assessed in a laboratory listening test by taking them on a ride in one of the cars to be assessed, just before entering the laboratory. In the other group subjects made the laboratory assessments without prior car riding.

In the automotive industry, tire noise is an important factor for the perceived quality of a product. A useful method to address such NVH problems is to combine recordings with measurements and/or simulations into auralizations. An example of a method to create structure-borne tire noise auralizations is to filter recordings of hub forces and moments through binaural transfer functions experimentally measured from the hub of the car to an artificial head in the car cabin. To create authentic auralizations of structure-borne sound, all six degrees of freedom (DOFs) of hub forces and moments and transfer functions should be included. However, rotational DOFs are often omitted due to measurement difficulty, complexity, time, and cost. The objective was to find which DOF (or DOFs) is perceived as most prominent in structure-borne tire noise. An auralization model of interior structure-borne tire noise was used.

In the vehicle development process, targets are defined to fulfill customers' expectations on acoustic comfort. The interior complete vehicle acoustic targets can be cascaded down to system and component targets, e.g. insulation properties and source strengths. The acoustic transfer functions (ATFs) from components radiating airborne noise play a central role for the interior sound pressure levels. For hybrid vehicles fitted with an electric traction motor, the contribution of high frequency tonal components radiated from the motor housing needs to be controlled. The interior sound pressure due to an airborne motor order can be estimated by surface velocities and ATFs. This study addresses the ATFs measured from a large number of positions located around an electric rear axle drive (ERAD) and their influence on estimated interior noise. First, the magnitude variation between the individual ATFs and how it clearly can be visualized was presented.

System and component target setting for noise and vibration are important activities within automotive product development. New challenges arise when electric motors are introduced into cars traditionally powered by combustion engines. The emitted noise from an electric traction motor for hybrid electric vehicles is characterized by high frequency tonal components from the dominating magnetic harmonics which can be perceived as annoying. Sound power is frequently used for quantifying the airborne noise from rotating electrical machines. This paper describes the process of determining the radiated sound power from an automobile electric rear axle drive in-situ and its contribution to interior cabin noise for a prominent rotor order. The sound power was calculated by combining the average stator surface vibration velocity together with an estimate of the radiation efficiency.

During the winter special winter tires are used to prevent the car from slipping and the grip can be improved by using studded tires. Studded tires are known to cause higher noise levels and noise that is perceived as more annoying than non-studded tires. The objective was to model the interaction between the stud pattern and the stud/tire response (i.e. sound) caused by the excitation of the studs, and to make the result audible. In this study the interior airborne noise caused by the studs was auralized using a combination of recordings, modeling and filtering. The proposed stud auralization model makes it possible to evaluate the influence of the stud pattern and the stud/tire response at any desired speed. The noise caused by the studs is determined by the stud/tire responses when studs hit the pavement, the stud pattern and the speed of the tire. The stud patterns and the stud/tire responses were measured for 5 different studded tires.