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Head-related transfer function measurements in a compartment fire.

Mustafa Z Abbasi¹, Preston S Wilson¹, Ofodike A Ezekoye¹

¹Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas.

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

|April 2, 2022

Summary

Firefighting Personal Alert Safety System (PASS) alarms may be harder to detect in fires. Fire alters room acoustics, changing how the PASS alarm signal travels and is received, potentially impacting firefighter rescue.

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Area of Science:

Acoustics
Fire Safety Engineering
Signal Processing

Background:

Firefighters use Personal Alert Safety System (PASS) devices for rescue.
Fire creates complex acoustic environments due to temperature and density variations.
Acoustic properties of spaces are altered by fire conditions.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the impact of fire on the acoustic properties of a room.
To analyze how fire affects the Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTF) of an alarm signal.
To determine the consequences for PASS alarm detection and localization.

Main Methods:

Experimental measurements of HRTF in a fire environment.
Analysis of HRTF in both time and frequency domains.
Examination of narrowband tone receive levels.

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Main Results:

Fire causes low-frequency HRTF modes to increase in frequency.
Higher-frequency HRTF structures become unstable over time.
Fire leads to significant (>10 dB) variations in received alarm signal levels.
Time-of-arrival differences between ears become unstable.

Conclusions:

Fire-induced acoustic changes significantly impact PASS alarm signal propagation.
Altered HRTF and signal levels may hinder alarm detection and localization.
These acoustic effects have critical life safety implications for firefighters.