21st Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, 13-18 September, 1998
Paper ICAS-98-5.11.3

DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF PROPELLERS FOR GENERAL AVIATION AIRCRAFT NOISE REDUCTION

Drack L. E., Wood L. A.
RMIT, Australia

Keywords: propeller, general aviation, aircraft, noise reduction

A propeller design program has been developed for use by general aviation aircraft designers. Named SPONOP (Subsonic Propeller design for Noise and Performance), the primary motivation behind its development is to allow these designers to meet stringent noise regulations whilst maintaining or improving aircraft performance over off the-shelf designs. The core of the design program is a two stage optimiser using simulated annealing and a gradient method to produce propellers which are optimal over the entire flight envelope, with constraints including maximum flyover noise level as specified by regulations and structural integrity in all operating conditions. The test case presented shows the optimiser's success in designing a propeller which allows a production aircraft to meet its noise certification requirement whilst improving the rate of climb during takeoff, range, maximum velocity and takeoff distance when compared to the same aircraft fitted with an off-the-shelf propeller.

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