Computational Study on Noise of Urban Air Mobility Quadrotor Aircraft

This paper investigates the acoustics of a one-passenger and a six-passenger quadrotor urban air mobility (UAM) aircraft in level flight based on a high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach. The CFD simulations are carried out using the HPCMP CREATETM-AV multidisciplinary rotorcraft analysis and simulation tool Helios. The acoustic simulations are performed using the acoustic prediction tool PSU-WOPWOP. A total of three CFD models are simulated: a one -passenger isolated rotor configuration, a one-passenger full configuration with a fuselage, and a six-passenger isolated rotor configuration. The noise comparison between the one-passenger isolated rotor case and the full configuration case shows that the vehicle fuselage increases the A-weighted sound pressure level (SPL) up to 5 dB. The acoustic comparison between the one-passenger and the six-passenger isolated rotor configuration shows that the maximum overall SPL difference is up to 14 dB. Furthermore, it is shown that the noise of the six-passenger configuration is approximately 11 dB lower than that of a similar-sized conventional helicopter in an overhead scenario. The community noise impact of UAM aircraft is also assessed and compared to various background noise levels. The results show that the one-passenger quadrotor noise can be fully masked by freeway noise at an altitude greater than or equal to 1000 ft, while the six-passenger quadrotor noise can only be partially masked by freeway noise even at an altitude of 1000 ft.