Reduced order modeling of interior noise for an aircraft during early stage design

Abstract

The design of an aircraft must balance the performance in many disciplines in order to achieve performance expectations at minimum weight and cost. During the conceptual design phase there is no time for developing detailed simulation models and decisions are typically made either by using low fidelity models or existing data and regression models. However, the decisions made during the conceptual design phase greatly affect the performance of the aircraft and the associated cost. The structural design during early product development focuses on strength, fatigue, corrosion, maintenance, inspection, and manufacturing. The structures are designed as a load carrying shell reinforced by frames and longitudinals, and a skin-stringer construction supported by spars and stiffeners. The structural design of the fuselage is directly related with the interior noise performance of the aircraft. Therefore, an easy to use, computational, physics based capability for interior noise prediction, which requires small computational resources, and can operate using the same amount of limited data which is available for the structure during the early product development stages, is a key enabler in bringing interior noise computations in early aircraft design. A case study of such capability will be presented.