NOISE ASSESSMENT OF AIRCRAFT WITH DISTRIBUTED ELECTRIC PROPULSION USING A NEW NOISE ESTIMATION FRAMEWORK

Future aircraft are envisioned to have significantly smaller noise footprint and emissions impact in order to satisfy the ambitious long-term aircraft noise and emissions goals set by several organisations worldwide, for example ACARE and NASA. Distributed electric propulsion (DEP) is anticipated as one of the most suitable and efficient options for powering these aircraft. DEP is the dispersion of thrust among multiple propulsors that are driven electrically rather than mechanically. This paper presents preliminary noise estimations for a civil aircraft that uses various DEP architectures (e.g. different number of electric propulsors, powered by either batteries or gas turbine engines), obtained through a new noise estimation framework that estimates noise variations arising from technological and/or operational changes with respect to a baseline scenario, where the noise levels are known. The aim of the paper is therefore twofold; investigate the possible noise benefits of DEP aircraft, whilst on the other hand demonstrate the core methodology and capabilities of our framework for estimating the noise impact of future aircraft concepts. This preliminary study indicates the framework’s potential in correctly capturing trends.