An experimental investigation of reducing advanced turboprop cabin noise by wing shielding

An experimental investigation was undertaken to determine if wing shielding could reduce the noise impacting the fuselage of an advanced turboprop airplane. Four wings were tested behind two eight-bladed propeller models. Significant shielding of the propeller noise was observed and a particular wing-propeller geometry was identified to provide the most shielding. Specifically, an up-inboard rotation would be needed for a low-wing airplane and a down-inboard rotation for a high-wing airplane. As the axial Mach number was increased, the position where the shielding starts moved farther downstream. This shift in the start of shielding was roughly a straight line with respect to Mach number between M = 0.7 and M = 0.8. At M = 0.85 the start of shielding does not shift any farther downstream. A simple barrier noise-reduction model gave the same trends with transducer positions as did the data, and, if corrected for Mach number shift, the model might be used to provide estimates of the wing shielding. Besides providing a barrier to the noise reaching the shielded area, the wing also reflects some of the noise back onto the unshielded area. This can make the noise difference between the unshielded and shielded areas of the fuselage larger than would be expected by simple wind shielding.