Psychoacoustic Analysis of the Noise Emissions from the Airbus A320 Aircraft Family and its Nose Landing Gear System

This manuscript presents a psychoacoustic analysis of the noise emissions from the Airbus A320 aircraft family, with a special focus on the tonal noise emitted by its nose landing gear (NLG) system. The study is based on microphone array measurements of aircraft flyovers under operational conditions performed next to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. It was found that the NLG system is a dominant tonal noise source for all aircraft subtypes measured (A319, A320, A320neo, A321, and A321neo) around 1700 Hz. The magnitude of the tonal noise observed was strongly correlated with the aircraft velocity, whereas the tonal frequency remained relatively constant. A preliminary psychoacoustic analysis between the different aircraft subtypes showed that, on average, the neo versions presented higher metric values for effective perceived noise level (EPNL), psychoacoustic annoyance, and loudness but lower tonality than their older ceo counterparts. However, given the low number of neo samples available in this study, no strong conclusion can be drawn from this analysis. Overall, the A321 aircraft measured presented lower average values for all noise metrics evaluated than the A320 ones, despite being larger and heavier. These claims will be evaluated in upcoming dedicated psychoacoustic listening experiments.