Aircraft noise is the second largest noise polluter. You can probably guess what the biggest noise polluter is. No, no it’s not re-election ads – tho they come close. It’s road noise. Yeah, those vehicles we drive do much more than just pollute the air with gases. There are two initiatives going on to rectify that situation. And they use two different approaches to help alleviate the problem. The first is the Silent Aviation Project at the Cambridge-MIT Institute. And the second is an electrical arcing solution at the Ohio State University.
The Silent Aviation Initiative brings together 35 researchers to tackle the thorny issue of aircraft noise. They looked at three major causes of aircraft noise: the engines, the frame, and the undercarriage. And they came up with some interesting solutions to these problems. You can see their prototype model on the right. They put the engines on top of the aircraft to allow the body of the aircraft to dissipate the engine noise. There are other
techniques involved such as embedding the engines more and lining them with noise dampening materials. This will be especially helpful on take-offs, where engines are revving high and making lots of noise. But the undercarriage and frame give off a lot of noise on landings. These features cause the most drag on landings and are used to slow the plane down. But they also give off a lot of noise in doing that. Their approach is to find a different way to slow the planes down that include steeper landings. They didn’t elaborate on how they were going to achieve this.
Meanwhile, Mohammad Samimy and his crew at the Ohio State University are working an electrical solution to the engine noise.
