Probability density prediction of peak sound pressure levels from firecracker explosions

On New Year’s Eve and some festivals, we encounter a great number of firecracker explosions. The peak sound pressure levels originating from the explosions can cause annoyance, loss of hearing, fire hazards, serious personal injuries, and even death. The immission of a peak sound pressure level at a given location due to an individual firecracker depends mainly on its sound power, on the distance from the explosion, and on the sound pressure distribution in the time and frequency domain. In this paper, some practical measurements have been performed over a New Year’s Eve, and the results were compared with other days. A special emphasis is given to statistical aspects and the probability distribution function of peak sound pressure levels, originating from a great number of random firecracker explosions. Results have shown that the probability distribution closely follows the Rayleigh distribution, but, when the number of explosions per unit time is high enough, it tends to a Gaussian (normal) distribution.