Simulation model for the prediction of urban air mobility noise in São Paulo

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is quickly developing with the objective of transporting passengers at lower altitudes in urban areas using automated aircraft. Noise is one of the important challenges for engineers developing these types of aircraft as they will be operating in cities and must therefore pursue the smallest noise impact for communities and new users of the technology. This paper presents a process to predict the sound propagation outside an Electric Vertical Take-off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft in an urban environment. Computational Aeroacoustics (CAA) results are used as input to an acoustic Raytracing model to propagate these sources and calculate the sound pressure distribution on surrounding buildings. With these results, the sound pressure level inside and outside buildings can then be calculated. The paper includes a demonstrator model to illustrate the process and results and compare the noise emissions from an eVTOL against a generic helicopter using a 3D section of the urban landscape in the city of São Paulo.