Holistic approach to wind turbine noise
From blade trailing-edge modifications to annoyance estimation
R. Merino Martinez (TU Delft - Aircraft Noise and Climate Effects)
Reto Pieren (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa))
Beat Schäffer (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa))
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
Wind turbines represent an encouraging option for sustainable energy but their noise emissions can be an issue for their public acceptance. Noise reduction measures, such as trailing-edge serrations or permeable inserts, seem to offer promising results in reducing wind turbine noise levels. This manuscript presents a novel holistic approach for perception-based evaluation of wind turbine noise and the performance of reduction measures using synthetic sound auralization. To demonstrate its feasibility, a case study featuring four state-of-the-art noise reduction trailing-edge add-ons synthetically applied to two full-scale wind turbines at nominal power is presented. The synthetic sound signals were auralized and propagated to three observer locations. The expected annoyance in each case was estimated by employing a combination of psychoacoustic sound quality metrics and a listening experiment featuring 16 participants. A close relation was found between the results of the psychoacoustic metrics and the listening experiment. In general, this holistic approach provides valuable information for the design of optimal noise reduction measures and wind turbines.
help_outline