Criteria for noise annoyance evaluation on board ships

Marine and offshore regulations about onboard noise are quite stratified and tangled, being issued by a number of international and national bodies. At the same time, many of the requirements are actually expressed in non quantitative terms and neglect parameters like noise spectra, low frequency pulsations or sound reverberation, which deeply influence the “sound wellness”. Aim of this paper is therefore to improve present requirements by introducing more meaningful noise annoyance criteria. These new criteria should be at the same time able to better express the actual reactions to noise from crew and passengers and simple enough to be widely applied on board ships. Such enhanced criteria are derived from the noise rating methods provided to rate indoor background sound in the civil engineering context. The possibility to make use of these indicators in the naval field is analyzed and some recommendations for a proper application on ships are given.