Approach for combining physical properties and sensibility for pleasant beverage can-opening sound

The sound quality of consumer products has recently become an important feature, receiving much attention in the fields of engineering and manufacturing. The sound could add value to the product in the way that it meets the interests and preferences of consumers in a wide range of fields. The present study deals with the sound emitted from beverage cans when lifting the tab of the can end to open it before drinking. With a view toward finding the characteristics of sound that have a sense of ease and certainty for the consumer when opening a beverage can, we introduce the semantic differential method for the subjective assessment of sounds of various cans. We then perform waveform analyses in both time and frequency domains to determine the physical properties of the desirable sounds. Finally, we successfully correlate the texture factor with the duration of the tearing sound, which may be a new way to design cans with pleasant sounds. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.