Development of Sound Quality Evaluation Technique for a Refrigerator under Household Usage Environment

실환경에서의 냉장고 음질 평가 기법 개발

The quality of various noises generated in the refrigerator is one of the important factors in deciding quality of the product. The main focus of sound control design has been shifted from reduction of sound level to improvement of sound duality for customer's preference. Up to date the purpose of noise control is the minimization of noise level. However despite of gradual decrease of noise level, occasionally the perceptional quality of noise has not been improved. In this paper, the relation between subjective and objective evaluation of sound quality has established and sound quality index is developed using ANN for evaluation of refrigerator's noise of both the starting noise and the stable running noise of compressor. To verify the usefulness of the index, the results in this paper have been compared with those surveyed by Consumer Union in USA.