Structures & materials & aerodynmic, aerothermodyn amic & acoustics technology for aerospace vehicle recovery act funds smaaatav contract NNL04AA11B, the boeing company task entitled "open rotor…

This federal contract award is for NASA's Langley Research Center to work with The Boeing Company on an aeroacoustic experiment to study the noise impacts of open rotor propulsion systems integrated with different aircraft configurations. The $6,153,239 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract builds on previous research conducted under a prior task order, with the goal of improving the understanding and prediction of propulsion airframe aeroacoustic (PAA) effects, particularly as they relate to emerging open rotor engine designs. The experiment will measure the variation in noise with key parameters for both a conventional tube-and-wing aircraft design and an unconventional blended wing body configuration. This research supports NASA's Environmentally Responsible Aviation project, which aims to develop noise reduction technologies for advanced aircraft. The contract has no set-aside designation.

Structures & materials & aerodynmic, aerothermodyn amic & acoustics technology for aerospace vehicle recovery act funds smaaatav contract NNL04AA11B, the boeing company task entitled "open rotor propulsion airframe aeroacoustics experiment in the boeing low speed aeroacoustics facility (lsaf)" 1.0 background propulsion airframe aeroacoustics (PAA) is an element of NASA s environmentally responsible aviation (ERA) project. The PAA technical area in NASA s acoustics research is focused on improving the understanding and quantification of PAA effects, prediction tool development, and noise reduction technology development that are related to the aeroacoustic effects of propulsion airframe integration. PAA noise reduction technology aims to reduce net radiated noise to the ground by reducing a noise source, or an interaction of noise sources that can be directly attributed to effects from propulsion airframe interaction. In the future, IT is expected that the development of ultra high bypass ratio engines will present new challenges and opportunities relative to the integration of the engine and airframe. This is particularly the case for open rotor propulsion systems with their effectively ultra high bypass ratios from the unducted, counter-rotating rotors. These propulsion systems integrated with a variety of airframes are actively being studied for the aircraft transport market over the next two decades. IT is, therefore, important for NASA s PAA research to improve the understanding of the PAA effects for such new configurations and to begin the process of developing noise reduction approaches that are particularly suitable and feasible for these types of aircraft. This leads to the necessary requirements for this task order. For lower noise objectives, a promising approach is to install open rotors on aircraft configurations so as to produce acoustic shielding of the source noise from an open rotor. High quality acoustic data is necessary in order to support aircraft configuration trade studies. A high quality aeroacoustic wind tunnel experiment is envisioned in order to produce the basic understanding of the higher priority PAA effect parameters for open rotor installations on two aircraft configurations, a conventional, state-of-the-art (SOA) tube-and-wing such as a boeing 737 or 777 and an unconventional aircraft such as a boeing blended wing body (BWB). An additional objective is that the variation of noise with key parameters be measured so as to provide validation data for prediction methods. 2.0 scope of work: NASA intends to build upon research conducted under contract NNL04AA11B, previous task order NNL05AD23T, having developed and demonstrated the capabilities and expertise for propulsion airframe aeroacoustic integration experimentation of jet integration with both SOA and BWB aircraft configurations. In this task, propulsion airframe aeroacoustic experimentation shall be performed with an open rotor propulsion noise simulator integrated with both SOA and BWB aircraft configuration models.