Multi-Fidelity Simulation of Aircraft Noise Sources and Their Reduction

A special issue of Aerospace (ISSN 2226-4310). This special issue belongs to the section "Aeronautics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (29 February 2024) | Viewed by 13843

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
German Aerospace Center, Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology, Technical Acoustics, Braunschweig, Germany
Interests: computational aeroacoustics (CAA) methods; numerical discretization, hydrodynamic-acoustic splitting methods; multi-fidelity noise source modeling; stochastic methods for aeroacoustics noise sources and turbulent inflow forcing; embedded wall modeled LES approaches for aeroacoustics; active wall models and turbulent inflow forcing; fast multipole BEM methods for aeroacoustics applications; multi-fidelity propeller noise source modeling

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Guest Editor
German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology, Göttingen, Germany
Interests: aircraft noise; noise prediction; aircraft design; flight simulation; noise abatement procedures; uncertainty quantification; auralization; low-noise aircraft design; perception-influenced design
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The reduction of aircraft noise emissions especially in the environment of highly populated urban areas around airports is an urgent problem that in the foreseeable future will be of even further increasing importance. Novel aircraft concepts will become inevitably necessary to drastically lower the environmental impact of engine emissions. Aerospace engineering could provide drastically new concepts up to zero operational emission and contrail avoiding aircraft design and flight operation that could also be significant as a stimulus for sustainable technical solutions for other transportation sectors.  Future advanced air mobility (AAM) vehicles promise entirely new ways of transportation in the urban environment.

However, the development of novel aircraft and propulsor concepts and their installation effects on noise will require the careful identification of different acoustic sources around future aircraft and other aerial vehicle concepts, a substantial understanding of the underlying noise source mechanism, the deliberate exploitation of design parameters for the minimization of noise emissions, altogether with the application of noise reduction technologies to sustain a continuous future development towards significantly lowered noise emissions.

Numerical simulation methods will play an essential key role in the development of the environmentally friendly low-noise aerial vehicle of the future.

Design-to-noise methods that on the one hand side have a prediction fidelity high enough to cover the main physical principles of the underlying noise generation process but also provide computational turnaround times short enough to be applicable with optimization methods will be crucial to accomplish the targeted noise reduction goals.

Furthermore, the direct derivation of simplified semi-empirical noise prediction from high-fidelity computational aeroacoustics (CAA) simulation will be an essential element that enables the analysis of novel “out-of-the-box” concepts along their take-off and landing flight trajectories. 

This Special Issue entitled “Multi-Fidelity Simulation of Aircraft Noise Sources and Their Reduction” targets research studies that deal with the development and application of new design-to-noise methods in the framework of future aircraft architectures. The range of numerical investigations spans from the prediction of specific broadband and tonal noise sources, such as landing gears, and high-lift noise, the lowering of noise levels relative to datum designs, the numerical evaluation of noise reduction technologies such as porous surface treatments and meta-materials, the rapid and reliable first principle-based prediction of propulsor noise and their installation effects, noise shielding at novel airframe architectures, the development of semi-empirical prediction tools from high-fidelity simulations, as well as high-fidelity methods based aeroacoustics optimization.   

Dr. Roland Ewert
Dr. Lothar Bertsch
Guest Editors

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

23 pages, 5161 KiB  
Article
Smart Blade Count Selection to Align Modal Propagation Angle with Stator Stagger Angle for Low-Noise Ducted Fan Designs
by Stephen Schade, Robert Jaron, Lukas Klähn and Antoine Moreau
Aerospace 2024, 11(4), 259; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace11040259 - 26 Mar 2024
Viewed by 551
Abstract
The rotor–stator interaction noise is a major source of fan noise. Especially for low-speed fan stages, the tonal component is typically a dominant noise source. A challenge is to reduce this tonal noise, as it is typically perceived as unpleasant. Therefore, in this [...] Read more.
The rotor–stator interaction noise is a major source of fan noise. Especially for low-speed fan stages, the tonal component is typically a dominant noise source. A challenge is to reduce this tonal noise, as it is typically perceived as unpleasant. Therefore, in this paper, we analytically, numerically and experimentally investigate an acoustic effect to lower the tonal noise excitation. Our study on an existing low-speed fan indicates a reduction in tonal interaction noise of more than 9 dB at the source if the excited acoustic modes propagate parallel to the stator leading edge angle. Moreover, a design-to-low-noise approach is demonstrated in order to apply this effect to two new fan stages with fewer stator than rotor blades. The acoustic design of both fans is determined by an appropriate choice of the rotor and stator blade numbers in order to align the modal propagation angle with the stator stagger angle. The blade geometries are obtained from aerodynamic optimization. Both fans provide similar aerodynamic but opposing acoustic radiation characteristics compared to the baseline fan and a significant tonal noise reduction resulting from the impact of the modal propagation angle on noise excitation. To ensure that this effect can also be applied to other low-speed fans, a design rule is derived and validated. Full article
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15 pages, 29876 KiB  
Article
Installed Fan Noise Simulation of a Supersonic Business Aircraft
by Stan Proskurov, Markus Lummer, Jan Werner Delfs, Roland Ewert, Jochen Kirz, Martin Plohr and Robert Jaron
Aerospace 2023, 10(9), 773; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace10090773 - 31 Aug 2023
Viewed by 1049
Abstract
Overcoming the problem of excessive engine noise at low altitudes is a formidable task on the way to developing a supersonic passenger aircraft. The focus of this paper is on the fan noise shielding during take-off, investigated as part of the DLR project [...] Read more.
Overcoming the problem of excessive engine noise at low altitudes is a formidable task on the way to developing a supersonic passenger aircraft. The focus of this paper is on the fan noise shielding during take-off, investigated as part of the DLR project ELTON SST (estimation of landing and take-off noise of supersonic transport) for an in-house aircraft design. The supersonic inlet is required to provide the proper quantity and uniformity of air to the engine over a wider range of flight conditions than the subsonic inlet. For passenger aircraft, the noise problem influences engine integration and placement, and the new generation of supersonic transport would require innovative engineering solutions in order to come up with an efficient low-noise design. Potential solutions are evaluated using DLR tools capable of accurate source generation and noise propagation to the far-field. For low-speed aircraft operation, the method of choice is a strongly coupled volume-resolving discontinuous Galerkin (DG) and fast multipole boundary element method (FM-BEM) which is applied due to a large disparity between the Mach numbers on the interior and exterior of the inlet. The method is used for obtaining the acoustic signature of the full-scale model at realistic flight points, including the application of the programmed lapse rate (PLR), which involves simulations at higher pitch angles than for the reference flight path. The results show that the proposed method is highly suitable for obtaining accurate noise footprints during the low-speed phase and could be used to assist with certification procedures of future supersonic aircraft. Full article
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18 pages, 2929 KiB  
Article
Blade-Tip Vortex Noise Mitigation Traded-Off against Aerodynamic Design for Propellers of Future Electric Aircraft
by Hua-Dong Yao, Zhongjie Huang, Lars Davidson, Jiqiang Niu and Zheng-Wei Chen
Aerospace 2022, 9(12), 825; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace9120825 - 15 Dec 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 11393
Abstract
We study noise generation at the blade tips of propellers designed for future electric aircraft propulsion and, furthermore, analyze the interrelationship between noise mitigation and aerodynamics improvement in terms of propeller geometric designs. Classical propellers with three or six blades and a conceptual [...] Read more.
We study noise generation at the blade tips of propellers designed for future electric aircraft propulsion and, furthermore, analyze the interrelationship between noise mitigation and aerodynamics improvement in terms of propeller geometric designs. Classical propellers with three or six blades and a conceptual propeller with three joined dual-blades are compared to understand the effects of blade tip vortices on the noise generation and aerodynamics. The dual blade of the conceptual propeller is constructed by joining the tips of two sub-blades. These propellers are designed to operate under the same freestream flow conditions and similar electric power consumption. The Improved Delayed Detached Eddy Simulation (IDDES) is adopted for the flow simulation to identify high-resolution time-dependent noise sources around the blade tips. The acoustic computations use a time-domain method based on the convective Ffowcs Williams–Hawkings (FW-H) equation. The thrust of the 3-blade conceptual propeller is 4% larger than the 3-blade classical propeller and 8% more than the 6-blade one, given that they have similar efficiencies. Blade tip vortices are found emitting broadband noise. Since the classical and conceptual 3-blade propellers have different geometries, especially at the blade tips, they introduce deviations in the vortex development. However, the differences are small regarding the broadband noise generation. As compared to the 6-blade classical propeller, both 3-blade propellers produce much larger noise. The reason is that the increased number of blades leads to the reduced strength of tip vortices. The findings indicate that the noise mitigation through the modification of the blade design and number can be traded-off by the changed aerodynamic performance. Full article
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