Matthieu Duroyon, a doctoral student in the UTC's ED 71 program, carried out his research entitled, "From the Study of Sonic Comfort in the Electric Vehicle Cabin to its Improvement Through Augmented Acoustics" between the Roberval laboratory (UTC, Alliance Sorbonne Université) and STMS (IRCAM, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, Ministère de la Culture) under the supervision of Nicolas Dauchez, Nicolas Misdariis, Patrick Susini and Louis-Ferdinand Pardo, in partnership with Renault under a CIFRE grant.
The defense will take place in French, in the Salle Stravinsky at IRCAM, on Friday March 14, 2025.
It will be recorded on You tube : https://youtube.com/live/6ZVUViS_N3s
The jury will be composed by :
- Jean François Petiot LS2N, Ecole Centrale de Nantes, rapporteur
- Clara Suied, RBA , Brétigny-sur-Orge, rapporteur
- Roland Cahen, CRD ENS Paris Saclay, ENSCI Les Ateliers, Paris, Examiner
-Arthur Givois Roberval, UTC, Compiègne, Examiner
- Sabine Meunier LMA, Aix Marseille Université, Examiner
Abstract:
Recent advances in cabin soundproofing in automobiles, along with the generalization of electric motors, silent, have profoundly transformed the user's auditory experience and challenged established notions of comfort, particularly sonic comfort. This thesis aims to explore the concept of sonic comfort in this context. To achieve this, a review of the scientific literature is conducted to clarify and define this notion of sonic comfort. This also enables to identify the tools suited to analyze and detect the emergence of sound sources that were previously masked or nonexistent, while considering the unique role of sound in the automotive environment.
This thesis is structured into three distinct and complementary parts. The first part addresses the description of the sound environment through a series of interviews with sound automotive specialists, focusing on sound descriptors. This work results in the development of a lexicon based on a paradigm designed within the PDS (Perception et Design Sonores) team, known as the SpeaK paradigm. The second part of the thesis focuses on improving the sonic comfort of a specific situation characterized by a sound described as unpleasant or bothersome. The proposed solution involves adding sounds designed according to different masking typologies, referred to as Energetic, Habillage, and Attentional masking. Among these typologies, masks are created using a parametric synthesizer developed specifically for this purpose. A perceptual study in a controlled environment, employing a Best-Worst Scaling methodology, is then conducted. This study, carried out with 50 participants, quantifies the differences between these methodologies across two evaluated dimensions: defect detectability and scene pleasantness. Following this study, a perspective for in situ experiments to validate the results, as well as insights into the limitations and possible improvements of the experimental method, are proposed.
