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Completed TRL 7 (started at 4, targeting 7)
In noise testing Advanced Aircraft Mobility vehicles, sound spheres represent directivity patterns. The current standard measurement approach is to fly or hover the vehicle over an array of microphones and project the microphone spectra onto the sphere. The quality of the results is limited by the finite number of microphones, uncontrolled acoustic propagation effects related to weather, and background noise. The proposed innovation models the complex acoustic source and radiation as a linear algebra problem and the latest techniques from signal processing are applied to produce much higher-quality results than the current state of the art. The results substantially improve the spatial fidelity of the radiation model. The influences of weather and aircraft source motion are tamed. A knob within the linear algebra offers the ability to neatly reject background noise, potentially permitting tests in suburban areas instead of remote desert locations. The work plan extends the software to get the most out of the method in simulations and plans a flight test for Phase II. The flight test will leverage a wireless microphone system developed by a subcontractor to this project under an earlier NASA SBIR. The subtopic for this proposed innovation is “A1.02: Quiet Performance - Airframe Noise (SBIR).” The specific bullet point is “Noise Analysis and Characterization”: "Innovative source identification techniques for airframe (e.g., landing gear and high-lift systems) noise sources, including turbulence details related to flow-induced noise typical of separated flow regions, vortices, shear layers, etc. However, noise sources attributed solely to the engines are excluded from this call." The term “airframe noise” does not exclude AAM noise work this year because the noise is not confined to engines and the NASA researchers who are working intensely with measurements of this type are mostly at LaRC, the lead Center for the call.
Measurements of the noise of AAM/UAM noise in support of the NASA Advanced Air Mobility Project and the AAM National Campaign. The microphone setup described in NASA's high-profile paper "Acoustic Flight Test of the Joby Aviation Advanced Air Mobility Prototype Vehicle" has been copied and explicitly modeled for simulation in the proposal. Also, the method would apply to US Army testing using NASA's Mobile Acoustics Facility.
Noise tests of hundreds of air taxies and similar vehicles under development by dozens of companies. Mission planning tests for military applications in addition to those directly supported by NASA.
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