Acoustic validation of military aircraft noise models

Abstract

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1970 established the requirement to assess noise impacts from aircraft operations on the community surrounding military bases. A process for measuring and modeling aircraft noise sources and their propagation to ground locations was developed in response. The NOISEMAP suite of software programs produces noise footprints of yearly average impacts due to all flights that occur to and from an airbase. Through NOISEMAP’s decades of evolution, it retains the same fundamental measurement/modeling architecture and remains the approved model for environmental impact studies for aircraft within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). However, new advanced source and propagation models exist, which result in lower uncertainties and the calculation of additional useful noise impact metrics. No clear path exists to allow the use of these models for DoD environmental impact studies. This work presents a scientific validation experiment for aircraft overflight source/propagation models, focusing on suitability for use in a NEPA environmental impact study. The experiment relies on high-fidelity data collected during controlled overflight acoustic measurements of real aircraft and provides a quantitative benchmark for the evaluation of future models.