AE69001: SEMINAR 1

M.Tech 1st Year (Aerospace Engineering)

Department Of Aerospace Engineering, IIT Kharagpur
Name: Rather Laasani Sanya Shabir Date Of Presentation: 14/10/2019
Roll No: 19AE60R19

NOISE REDUCTION IN TURBOFAN ENGINE

Aircraft noise is a complex subject matter that has been studied for decades & still is the focus of many
research efforts today. Aircraft noise is regulated through standards & these standards are applied when
the aircraft is acquiring its airworthiness certifications. As per these standards the aircraft must meet or
fall below the designated noise levels. Effective Perceived Noise Level (EPNL) in decibels is a measure
of the relative noisiness of an individual aircraft pass-by event & a certification metric used for aircraft. It
evaluates both noise amplitude & duration at a single measurement point during a flyover. Noise
produced by the aircraft or its components during different flight phases is divided in three categories as
follows:

 Mechanical or Engine noise generated by the rotation of components

 Aerodynamic or Airframe noise due to the airflow around the surfaces of aircraft, especially when
flying at low altitudes and high speeds.
 Noise from aircraft systems such as cockpit & cabin pressurization & Auxiliary power units.

The main noise contributors are the engine and airframe (including wings & landing gears). At approach,
both produce nearly same noise levels with a slightly higher contribution by the engine. However, at
takeoff, the engine clearly dominates the radiated noise levels. Engine noise is one of the major
contributors to the overall sound levels as the aircraft operate near airports. The engine components
contributing to the acoustic radiation are the fan, the compressor stages, the combustion processes, the
turbine & the jet. Each component exhibits a distinct directivity (characteristic direction of radiation) & is
of different importance with respect to forward and rearward radiated noise. In forward direction i.e. in
flight direction, fan is dominant component in terms of sound pressure level. In rearward direction, along
with fan, the turbine stages, the combustion processes and above all the jet contribute to the radiated noise
field. Fan noise is dominant during both takeoff & approach. However, due to full power setting at takeoff
the jet noise dominates the rearward radiation & adds to overall engine sound pressure level. In contrast,
at approach, the jet noise becomes relatively low compared to fan, whereas, turbine becomes the second
significant noise source.

Fan noise is mainly the function of rotational tip speed & fan pressure ratio. The source of this noise is the
turbulence in the fan wake that strikes the stators & leads to unsteady pressure field which in turn
becomes acoustic wave and propagates through the engine fan duct. The sound wave propagation is
described by the acoustic wave equation as:

- = 0…………… acoustic wave equation in terms of sound pressure in one dimension.

- = 0……….……acoustic wave equation in terms of particle velocity.

Where,
P is sound pressure in Pa
x is particle displacement in m
c is the speed of sound in m/s
u is the particle velocity in m/s
t is the time in s.

The most general solution of the above equation is

p = f(ct-x) + g(ct+x)

where f & g are any two twice-differentiable functions. This may be considered as the superposition of
two waveforms of arbitrary profile, one travelling up the x-axis and the other travelling down the x-axis at
the speed of sound. The particular case of sinusoidal wave travelling in one direction is obtained by
choosing one function to be sinusoidal & other to be zero, giving

p = posin(ωt ± kx)

where ω is the angular frequency of the wave & k is the wave number.

Turbofan engines due to their advantage for higher performance & lower noise are the most common
engines to be used in commercial air transports. The noise reduction comes mainly from combination of
changes to the engine cycle parameters & low noise design features. In order to reduce the fan noise, the
tip speed & pressure ratio need to be reduced. The reduction in fan noise can be achieved by the following
technologies introduced by NASA after conducting a series of experiments:

1)The first experiment was done on a model scale fan called Advanced Ducted Propulsor (ADP) of an
Ultra-High Bypass Ratio engine concept by Pratt & Whitney. The results concluded that significant noise
reduction can be achieved by lowering the fan tip speed and pressure ratio. These tests helped in
designing the Geared Turbofan Engine in which a gear box was installed between the fan & compressor
to extract the work from turbine and run the fan at lower speeds thus maintaining the fan tip speeds below
Mach 1 to eliminate the shock associated noise.2) The passive noise control method such as re-direction
method have been tested. The scarf areo-intakes & scoop aero-intakes are introduced that reduce the
community exposure to aircraft noise by diverting the forward sector fan noise away from the ground.
The scarf inlet has constant scarf angle along circumferential direction while the scoop inlet doesn’t have
constant scarf angle & is termed as a compromise between axisymmetric inlets and scarf inlets. The scarf
aero-intake is divided into negative (lower side is forward extended type) and positive (upper side is
forward extended type). The positive scarf inlet has better aerodynamic performance but at the same time
has a bad characteristic of reflecting more sound waves towards the ground where the noise regulations
are applied. After a series of experiments with scarf & scoop intakes it was concluded that scoop aero-
intakes are more efficient. A scoop aero-intake with 15o scarf angle reduced maximum noise upto 11dB,
however, a scarf aero-intake with 15o scarf angle offers a maximum noise reduction of 7dB.3) The main
objective for noise reduction at the intake is to control the incoming flow and prevent it from losing its
laminar part so it’s beneficial to have swept section in both fan & stator. The forward swept fan diffuses
the incoming air & due to the sweep provided at the fan tip there is an appropriate decrease in velocity
which reduces the aerodynamic losses associated with shock, improves stall margin & increases the mass
flow through the fan along with noise reduction. In the absence of swept stators, the free air stream faces
the perpendicular stator blades which results in momentum losses & creates large amount of noise. Using
swept stators allows the free air stream to divert its way without creating any kind of losses. Swept stator
increases the phase change from hub to tip of the unsteady pressure field that produces the sound waves &
thus by increasing the effective distance between fan and stator vanes large amount of noise reduction is
achieved.5) Acoustic treatment is another method of reducing the noise from the engine components. In
this method, acoustic liners are applied on the internal walls of the engine nacelle in order to damp the
noise. The acoustic liner is a material composed of three different layers i.e. a porous top layer called face
sheet, the middle honey comb structure providing internal partitions and the lower impervious layer called
the back sheet. Earlier, the acoustic liners were only used in the intakes & by-pass duct but after a series
of experiments done in NASA for noise reduction it was observed that increasing the acoustic treatment
area over the rotor tip provides sufficient amount of noise reduction.

Jet noise is basically the noise caused by the high velocity jets & turbulent eddies generated by the
shearing flow. The jet noise at high velocity is due to the jet mixing noise & for supersonic flow it’s the
noise associated with the shock. Jet noise reduction is a major function of exhaust velocities thus in order
to reduce the jet noise it is necessary to reduce the exhaust velocities. Mixed turbofan engines extract the
energy from the engine core by mixing the flows from core & fan duct. This results in a reduced mixing
velocity. In 1996, a jet noise reduction concept using “chevron nozzles” was tested at NASA that reduces
jet noise by mixing the core & by-pass flows in a way that reduces low frequency missing noise from
highly turbulent flows. Model scale tests using chevron nozzles have shown that a reduction in jet noise
can be achieved by about 2.5EPNdB without changing the engine cycle. The thrust loss was found to be
less than 0.5%. There are chevron nozzles in production today used in several turbofan engines as a result
of these tests.

Engine systems where the cycle changes lower the fan tip speed, fan pressure ratio & lower the jet
exhaust velocity are the best ways to achieve significant noise reduction. Further noise reduction can be
realized by applying design features that reduce noise with minimal impact to performance.

References:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/63ec/e0b667f628b743a39cca4910f279855a1f1b.pdf
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20080001448.pdf
http://aancl.snu.ac.kr
http://www.ijmetmr.com/oloctober2016/MohdZaheeruddin-ShaistaFatima-MSatyanarayanaGupta-
282.pdf