Influence of low-speed aerodynamic performance on airport community noise

Properly assessing proposed aviation policies requires a thorough trade study of noise, emissions, fuel consumption, and cost. Aircraft low-speed aerodynamic performance is an important driver of all these impacts, and this thesis presents the development of an aerodynamic tool capable of accurately estimating key low-speed performance characteristics using aircraft geometry information typical of that available in the preliminary phase of aircraft design. The goal of this thesis is to use the low-speed aerodynamic estimates to present the sensitivity of aircraft noise to aircraft configuration and operational procedures, and then to identify improved procedures to reduce the cost, fuel use, and noise of current aircraft. The low-speed aerodynamic method developed in this work is comparable to aircraft manufacturer initial design tools. It requires about fifteen seconds on a modem computer and has been developed to a sufficient level of accuracy through a calibration study using Boeing flight test data, NASA wind tunnel results, and an empirically-tuned Lockheed method. The low-speed method is generally capable of predicting a drag polar, drag as a function of lift, to within one-percent. It also determines the changes of the drag polar due to high-lift devices, both slat and flap deployment, to within about three-percent. In addition, the method contains correlations to predict the variations of lift with angle of attack and the maximum lift coefficient; these predictions have errors around ten-percent and five-percent, respectively. The estimates produced by the method are of appropriate fidelity to properly model aircraft flight trajectories for fuel bum and noise estimates within larger environmental impact assessment models.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• March, Andrew I. (Andrew Irving)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ian Waitz.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/45253

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/45253