Experimental and Analytical Evaluation of Low-Noise Propeller Designs for Large Regional Aircraft

Two innovative, low noise propellers have been designed against a comprehensive set of requirements for a next generation propeller driven regional aircraft. These designs have been scaled down for wind tunnel testing and have shown significant noise reduction when compared to a state-of-the-art conventional design. Testing has been carried out at both low-speed conditions associated with the community noise certification points and at a high-speed cruise condition and a summary of the results are presented. Corrections have been derived to align the test data for a direct comparison of the propeller performance and noise. Unsteady aero-acoustic simulations of the wind tunnel configurations at cruise are also presented which show they are capable of predicting, with reasonable accuracy, the differences in efficiency and tonal noise between the three propeller designs.