Helicopter noise footprint prediction in unsteady maneuvers

Massimo Gennaretti*, Giovanni Bernardini, Jacopo Serafini, Alessandro Anobile, Sander Hartjes

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)
562 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This paper investigates different methodologies for the evaluation of the acoustic disturbance emitted by helicopter’s main rotors during unsteady maneuvers. Nowadays, the simulation of noise emitted by helicopters is of great interest to designers, both for the assessment of the acoustic impact of helicopter flight on communities and for the identification of optimal-noise trajectories. Typically, the numerical predictions consist of the atmospheric propagation of a near-field noise model, extracted from an appropriate database determined through steady-state flight simulations/measurements (quasi-steady approach). In this work, three techniques for maneuvering helicopter noise predictions are compared: one considers a fully unsteady solution process, whereas the others are based on quasi-steady approaches. These methods are based on a three-step solution procedure: first, the main rotor aeroelastic response is evaluated by a nonlinear beam-like rotor blade model coupled with a boundary element method for potential flow aerodynamics; then, the aeroacoustic near field is evaluated through the 1A Farassat formulation; finally, the noise is propagated to the ground by a ray tracing model. Only the main rotor component is examined, although tail rotor contribution might be included as well. The numerical investigation examines the differences among the noise predictions provided by the three techniques, focusing on the assessment of the reliability of the results obtained through the two quasi-steady approaches as compared with those from the fully unsteady aeroacoustic solver.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)165-180
Number of pages16
JournalInternational Journal of Aeroacoustics (online)
Volume16
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Apr 2017

Keywords

  • helicopter
  • near and far field noise
  • Unsteady aeroacoustics

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