Kategorie: ‘Urban noise’

The sound of drone swarms – contribution to the Quiet Drones conference 2026

08. Juli 2026 | von Aspöck, Lukas

The traffic in the skies above our cities is changing. Drones are rapidly moving from novelty to necessity — deployed for deliveries, inspections, mapping, and surveillance. Yet with expanding applications comes an increasingly relevant acoustic challenge: How do we manage their acoustic impact in urban environments? In the last week of June, these questions brought researchers, industry representatives, regulatory bodies, and research institutes together at Quiet Drones 2026 in Delft, Netherlands — the fourth edition of the international conference dedicated to all aspects of UAS and UAM acoustics, covering topics from aero-acoustic modelling to community noise perception.

Among the exciting research presented, IHTA’s research contribution is addressing one of the next steps in urban avaiation and drone technology— UAS swarms, where multiple drones operate in a coordinated formation. Though still in the early stage of deployment, swarms hold enormous potential for large-scale applications, and understanding their acoustic impact now is helpful to shape the regulations and design standards of tomorrow. As a first step towards acoustically designing and optimising drone swarms in line with human perception, our postdoctoral researcher Jithin Thilakan presented his work titled „Listening to UAS swarms: exploring the impact of swarm configuration attributes on annoyance perception.“ The study explored how swarm configuration attributes, such as the number of drones, their spatial arrangement, etc., shape annoyance perception, offering early evidence that smarter swarm design could pave the way for environmental friendly drone swarm operations in urban environments. The presented work was carried out as part of the SWOISE project, funded by the LuFo VI-3 programme of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.

: Jithin during his presentation at the Quiet Drones Conference in Delft.

: Presentation slide explaing the variation of drone swarms.

Kategorie: Acoustic simulation, Conferences, Current research, IHTA, Research, Urban noise
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Heat Pump Conference 2026 – Advancing Research on Heat Pump Acoustics

22. Juni 2026 | von Aspöck, Lukas

From 26–29 May 2026, Lara Stürenburg attended the Heat Pump Conference 2026 at the historic Hofburg in Vienna. The conference brought together researchers, industry representatives, and policymakers from around the world under the motto Decarbonisation through Innovation to discuss the latest developments in heat pump technology and its contribution to achieving global zero-carbon targets.

During the conference, Lara Stürenburg presented the work titled Study on human response to the cumulative impact of air source heat pump noise. The presentation focused on a large-scale listening experiment conducted at ten sites across seven European countries, involving more than 270 participants. This research is part of the international Annex 63 project Placement Impact on Heat Pump Acoustics. Within the task group Psychoacoustics of Heat Pumps, the aim is to better understand how the combined sound emissions of multiple air source heat pumps in residential back gardens influence human perception and annoyance.

Four other Annex 63 project partners also presented their research on heat pump acoustics. However, among the 367 contributions presented at the conference, this resulted in only five contributions focusing on acoustics and noise emissions of heat pumps. This highlights that acoustic aspects are still underrepresented in the broader heat pump research community. It is crucial to increase awareness of their noise emissions and their impact on both the environment and human perception. Greater consideration of acoustic aspects will be essential for the successful and sustainable integration of heat pumps into residential environments.

Beyond the scientific sessions, the conference provided a valuable opportunity to exchange ideas with experts working on heat pumps from various disciplines and countries. The policy forums particularly emphasised the central role of heat pumps in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and reaching the climate goals of many nations. It was inspiring to see how innovation, engineering, and interdisciplinary research contribute together to making sustainable heating technologies more efficient, accepted, and environmentally compatible.

: Lara during her conference presentation

: Conference venue indoors

: Lara in front of conference venue

Kategorie: Conferences, Current research, Events, IHTA, Noise, Research, Urban noise
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Einladung zur Abschlussveranstaltung des BaLSaM-Projekts am 21.1.2026

09. Januar 2026 | von Heck, Jonas Tobias

Das Projekt “Braunkohlereviere als attraktive Lebensräume durch Straßengeräuschsimulation auf Basis bestehender Verkehrsdaten zur Minimierung von Lärm” (BaLSaM) lädt Interessierte zur öffentlichen Abschlussveranstaltung ein. Sie wird am 21.1.2026 von 8:30-11:30 Uhr im Institut für Hörtechnik und Akustik (IHTA) der RWTH Aachen University stattfinden (Adresse: Kopernikusstraße 5, 52074 Aachen, Deutschland).

Im Rahmen des BaLSaM-Projekts wurde die Modellierung der Schallausbreitung von Verkehrslärm in urbanen Umgebungen sowie deren Auswirkung auf die menschliche Wahrnehmung untersucht. Das BaLSAM-Konsortium setzt sich zusammen aus dem Institut für Kraftfahrzeuge (IKA) und dem Institut für Hörtechnik und Akustik (IHTA) der RWTH Aachen University sowie RHA REICHER HAASE ASSOZIIERTE GmbH und HEAD acoustics GmbH. Gefördert wird das Projekt von dem Bundesministerium für Verkehr im Rahmen der mFUND-Initiative.

Während der Abschlussveranstaltung werden die Projektpartner die Ergebnisse des Projekts zu präsentieren. Darüber hinaus wird das Event die Gelegenheit bieten, Erfahrungen auszutauschen und gemeinsam über zukünftige Fragestellungen zu diskutieren. Neben der Teilnahme vor Ort ist auch eine digitale Teilnahme an der Veranstaltung möglich.

Agenda:

08:30	Anreise
09:00	Begrüßung
09:15	Vorstellung des Projektes
09:30	Vorstellung der Ergebnisse aus den Arbeitspaketen
11:00	Diskussion mit dem Teilnehmerkreis
11:15	Beginn der Demo & Ausklang des öffentlichen Teils
Im Anschluss: Projekt-interner Abschluss (nicht öffentlich)

— English version —

The BaLSaM project invites interested parties to the public closing event. It will take place on January 21, 2026, from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at the Institute for Hearing Technology and Acoustics (IHTA) at RWTH Aachen University (address: Kopernikusstraße 5, 52074 Aachen, Germany).

The BaLSaM project investigated the modeling of traffic noise propagation in urban environments and its impact on human perception. The BaLSAM consortium consists of the Institute for Automotive Engineering (IKA) and the Institute for Hearing Technology and Acoustics (IHTA) at RWTH Aachen University, as well as RHA REICHER HAASE ASSOZIIERTE GmbH and HEAD acoustics GmbH. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Transport as part of the mFUND initiative.

During the closing event, the project partners will present the results of the project. In addition, the event will provide the opportunity to exchange experiences and discuss future topics. In addition to attending in person, digital participation in the event is also possible.

—————

Anmeldung / Registration:

https://www.balsam-projekt.de/de/abschlussveranstaltung.html

Digitale Teilnahme per Teams / Online participation via Teams:

Jetzt an der Besprechung teilnehmen

Besprechungs-ID: 317 428 128 635 50

Passcode: zg6pV6Yw

Kategorie: Events, IHTA, Urban noise, Virtual Reality
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Aachen Acoustics Colloquium 2024

27. November 2024 | von Aspöck, Lukas

Currently the 15^th Aachen Acoustics Colloquium is taking place at Parkhotel Quellenhof in Aachen. This year’s scientific program includes 26 interesting contributions (2 Keynotes, 18 presentations and 6 poster presentations) about current research within the area of automotive acoustics, accompanied by a technical exhibition from various companies and research institutes. A detailed overview of the program can be found in this PDF.

Our institute is part of the organizing team of this event, which is attended by around 190 persons (~170 in-person and 22 online). On Tuesday morning, Michael Vorländer chaired the session „Infotainment in the vehicle“ including a very interesting keynote presentation by Hermann Ney on the current progress in speech and language technology. In the following session about numerical methods and simulations, our research assistant Christian Dreier held a presentation titled „Speed-dependent directivity patterns of road traffic sound sources“.

Additionally at the exhibition, our Institute presented current progress of research projects, e.g., the BalSaM project, in form of interactive demonstrations.

: Hosting team of the AAC: Lutz Eckstein (ika), Klaus Genuit (HEAD acoustics), Michael Vorländer (IHTA) and Stefan Pischinger (fev). Photo: Stefan Hense.

: Christian Dreier during his presentation. Photo: Stefan Hense.

Kategorie: Conferences, Current research, Events, GfTA e.V., IHTA, Research, Urban noise
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Inter-Noise 2024 in Nantes

10. September 2024 | von Aspöck, Lukas

This year’s Inter-noise conference took place from August 25^th to 29^th in Nantes, France. More than 1500 delegates participated in this conference and presented interesting research in the field of acoustics and noise. Highlights of the conference included a plenary talk by Arnaud Can and Pierre Aumond (Joint Research Unit in Environmental Acoustics at Gustave Eiffel University, Nantes, France) on advanced characterization of urban sound environments and a keynote lecture about the child perspective on noise exposure and health effects, held by Kerstin Persson Waye from Gothenburg University, Sweden, who is also collaborating with IHTA in the Equal-Life project.

Members of IHTA travelled to the conference and presented the following research papers:

Chalotorn Möhlmann: Validation measurement of vehicle pass-by models for dynamic urban environments (results of the BaLSaM project)
Marco Berzborn: Inference of the acoustic properties of transversely isotropic porous materials
Lara Stürenburg: Loudness and preference judgments for noises of a heat pump (results of the LowNoise project)
Joao Fatela (Guest researcher from the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Naples, Italy):
An experimental setup to investigate relevant validation parameters for the auralization of commercial aircraft flyovers in complex urban contexts

Directly after the closing ceremony of the conference, the satellite workshop “Unlocking the Potential of Open Research Software in Acoustics at Inter-Noise 2024” started. This event was organized by Maarten Hornikx and Huiqing Wang, from the Building Acoustics team of Eindhoven University of Technology, and included interesting exchanges and presentation on the development, maintenance, documentation and distrubtion of acoustics-related open-source software. As one of four invited speakers, Lukas Aspöck held a presentation about IHTA’s auralization software Virtual Acoustics. The slides of this presentation are available for download (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Next to insightful overview presentations by Maarten Hornikx and Huiqing Wang, further successful research software was presented: Pyroomacoustics by Eric Bezzam, NoiseModelling by Pierre Aumond and SoundScapy by Andrew Mitchell, along with many examples of challanges and best practices for open research and open-source software development. Many thanks to Maarten and his team for the invitation and the organization of this exciting event.