Recreational boat noise level evaluation

Abstract Recreational boats are constantly undergoing modifications and improvements in design, construction materials, and equipment. The boat builder mission is supply customers with a product with better quality, safety and onboard comfort. Onboard comfort should be evaluated along several points. Seakeeping is especially critical on long trips or operations in regions where harsh sea conditions occur. Over the years much attention has been given to boat behavior underway at sea. Recently onboard noise level has become a significant element of comfort and navigation safety. With high onboard noise a boater is unable to detect other boat whistles, horns and calls for help. This becomes a critical problem when sailing in fog and at night. Maintaining the internal noise level within limits is important. In order to address this noise problem, the paper presents a review of existing guidelines and the authors' proposal for B oat N oise E valuation (BNE) procedure for recreational powerboats. This procedure has been used in a number of boat trials. The use of this procedure is discussed along with representative boat noise level results and a comparison with the acceptable values for passenger comfort and safety.