Low-Noise Propeller Design for Quiet Electric Aircraft
Paper in proceeding, 2020

Inspired by the tremendous success of electric cars, the electrification technology has recently attracted a great deal of attention in aviation industry. This leads to the advent of massive efforts on the development of electric aircraft. Electrification enables zero CO2 and NOx emissions for aircraft in the near future. However, the annoying noise radiated from electrified propulsion systems is still a great challenge. The major noise sources are propellers. In particular, short-haul electric aircraft are usually flying from small airports near communities, which would exaggerate the noise impacts on residents. This paper presents a study on the propeller noise for a hypothetical electric aircraft. First of all, the acoustic study focuses on the effects of blade number, blade diameter, and rotation speed for an isolated propeller. Then, an unique configuration of dual-rotating propeller is briefly investigated to explore its potential of low-noise generation. Lastly, multiple propellers installed on an aircraft with various distributive propulsion strategies are investigated. The overall noise emission of these distributive propulsion strategies are promising to reduce the total noise from electric aircraft. Nonetheless, the noise level is very sensitive to the installation location of every propeller. An interesting finding is that the acoustic-wave interaction among the propellers are limited to the near field, and is insignificant in the far field. The present results are expected to enhance the understanding of propeller noise generation mechanisms, which are beneficial to propose guidelines on the development of low-noise distributive propulsion systems for electric aircraft.

Author

Zhongjie Huang

Chalmers, Mechanics and Maritime Sciences (M2), Fluid Dynamics

Huadong Yao

Chalmers, Mechanics and Maritime Sciences (M2), Fluid Dynamics

Anders Lundbladh

Chalmers, Mechanics and Maritime Sciences (M2)

GKN Aerospace Sweden

Lars Davidson

Chalmers, Mechanics and Maritime Sciences (M2), Fluid Dynamics

AIAA AVIATION 2020 FORUM


9781624105982 (ISBN)

AIAA AVIATION 2020 FORUM
Virtual, Online, ,

Reduction of Propeller Noise for Future Electrical Aircrafts

Chalmers, 2019-04-01 -- 2021-03-31.

Areas of Advance

Transport

Energy

Subject Categories

Aerospace Engineering

Energy Engineering

Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering

Fluid Mechanics and Acoustics

Infrastructure

C3SE (Chalmers Centre for Computational Science and Engineering)

DOI

10.2514/6.2020-2596

More information

Latest update

4/21/2023