Development and validation of a numerical prediction model to estimate the annoyance condition at the operator station of compact loaders

This paper describes the results of a study aimed at developing and validating a prediction model to assess the annoyance conditions at the operator station of compact loaders by using noise signal objective parameters only. For this purpose, binaural measurements were carried out on 41 compact loaders, both in stationary and real working conditions. The 62 binaural noise recordings were objectively analysed in terms of acoustic and psychoacoustic parameters and then divided into nine groups and used in specific jury tests in order to obtain the subjective annoyance scores. Finally, multiple regression technique was applied to the first six groups of noise stimuli to develop the model while the remaining groups were used to validate it.