Numerical Investigation of Propeller-Wing Interaction Noise with Scattering and Shielding

Aerodynamic and acoustic interactions in installed propeller configurations can have significant effects on overall noise levels. In this paper, we present a mid-fidelity approach that combines a panel-vortex particle method for aerodynamic prediction with a novel time domain boundary element method (TDBEM) for acoustic prediction to efficiently resolve installation effects on tonal noise. The approach is applied to a propeller-wing configuration originally presented and tested by Zawodny et al. (2021). Aerodynamic and acoustic predictions are compared against experimental data to assess the proposed approach, as well as to investigate the interactional mechanisms responsible for the far-field noise. The results show strong potential to capture interaction noise, although some discrepancies remain for aspects of the unsteady aerodynamic and acoustic predictions at certain wing placements. Breakdowns of acoustic contributions in the installed propeller configurations reveal significant effects from propeller potential interaction, wake impingement, and scattering mechanisms. The near-field spatial scaling of the propeller acoustic field with the propeller diameter is observed to have a strong impact on the scattering effect from the wing, leading to a significant scattered contribution even though the far-field acoustic wavelength is much larger than the wing chord.