MONTANA: a high-level noise prediction framework for Future Novel Aircraft

Abstract

The motivation behind the research presented in this thesis is to establish noise considerations and assessment in the design process of air vehicles, as early as the preliminary design stage. This will allow noise emissions to have a driving role in the design choices. To enable such contributions, adequate models must be developed to deal with the significant data constraints, rapid iterative design procedures and turn around times, of the early design stages. This thesis describes the development of MONTANA (Modular Novel Transport Aircraft Noise Assessor) a high level noise framework for the assessment of novel aircraft, from their technologies, to operational considerations. MONTANA focuses the concept of a lumped source model that represents any given air vehicle, in terms of the individual noise source mechanisms. The lumped source model is then used in a multitude of ways to estimate cetification point levels, Noise-Power-Distance curves and airport community noise levels. On the noise source level, focus is given on the development and validation of scaling laws for propeller/rotor tonal noise, for the prediction of changes in noise as a function of variation in design and operation. The procedure is then implemented within a total aircraft noise source to estimate Noise-Power-Distance curves for novel aircraft designs. The second problem deals with the airport/community aspect of aircraft noise. The ISVR code RANE (Rapid Aviation Noise Evaluator) is updated to include, amongst others, the definition of three-dimensional aircraft directivity in the generation of noise surfaces, and consequently noise exposure footprints and contours. Modifications to the flight path generation model were included, to allow for novel VTOL (Vertical Takeoff and Landing) operations to be easily modelled and studied. Conical quadric surfaces were introduced as means of modelling quasi-static power setting variation. Finally, a source rotation model was implemented for a preliminary study into the transition phase of VTOL capable fixed wing aircraft. Through a multi-level benchmarking process, in addition to two presented use-cases for assessment of regional hydrogen aircraft and fully-electric Advanced Air Mobility vehicles, MONTANA demonstrated the potential and usefulness in contributing towards identifying important trade-offs, quantifying the impact of design parameters and driving effective planning and decision-making.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Antonio J Torija Martinez: orcid.org/0000-0002-5915-3736

ORCID for Anderson Ramos proenca: orcid.org/0000-0002-4002-1805

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