Vibrations’ influence on Dieselness perception

Up to now, different studies dealing with vibrations’ influence on acoustics have been, in most cases, realized on global annoyance. In our case, the present study examines the vibrations’ influence on the auditory perception of Diesel character (called Dieselness in this article) of a vehicle. In addition, cultural experience is evaluated by testing two groups of Diesel owners from two European countries (respectively France and Germany). During the experiment, each population was exposed to sound only, and sound and vibrations simultaneously. This perceptual test was realized on a vibration bench (driver seat and steering wheel) with headphones. Three kinds of vehicules and six different driving situations have been tested. Results reveal no differences between French and German. Nevertheless, the adding of vibrations influences the Dieselness evaluation. The participants give slightly higher scores (more Diesel) or equal (as Diesel) with vibrations than without. However, this vibration effect is slightly dependent on the type of vehicles and on the driving situations and it appears less important for German people. In addition, for each group of participants, the other factors vehicle and driving situation have an effect on Dieselness assessment. The effect of vehicle allows to show that 3 cylinders car is significantly different from 4 cylinders and 6 cylinders cars. Finally, the interaction between driving situation and vehicle shows the strongest effect on Dieselness evaluation, among all interactions tested. The vehicle effect is dependent on the driving situation. All results and conclusions have to be taken with care in order not to generalize for all similar classification cars.