Experimental observations of an installed-on-pylon contra-rotating open rotor with equal blade number in pusher and tractor configuration

Abstract

Noise from contra-rotating open rotors is a major obstacle to the adoption of this fuel efficient technology as a viable aircraft propulsion system. A better understanding of both contra-rotating open rotor noise generation and reduction has been achieved due to ongoing extensive research. One of the most recent research activities is the WENEMOR (wind tunnel tests for the evaluation of the installation effects of Noise EMissions of an open rotor advanced regional aircraft) project, which has been developed in response to the requirements described in the Clean Sky-Integrated Technology Demonstrators under the heading of Green Regional Aircraft. The project investigates the airframe installation effects of a [Formula: see text] scale model of a regional aircraft equipped with two contra-rotating open rotors of the same rotor diameter, the same rotational speed and equal blade number. For this case, the blade passing frequency of rotor-alone tones and the frequency of relevant interaction tones cannot be distinguished due to the equal blade count of the two rotors. This study presents the tone directivity plots up to 4 × blade passing frequency of the isolated WENEMOR single pylon contra-rotating open rotor engine in both pusher and tractor configurations at various angles of incidence and flow velocities. A linear array of 13 microphones is deployed for the far field sound measurements. The tone directivity trends show the efficient on-axis acoustic radiation at all blade passing frequency tones with the contra-rotating open rotor tone at 2 × blade passing frequency dominating in the vast majority of the tests. The main objective is to compare the acoustic emission of pusher and tractor configurations tested under the same flow velocities and angles of incidence. The results suggest that the pusher configuration of the isolated contra-rotating open rotor tends to be slightly louder than the tractor at 2 × blade passing frequency. However, it is shown that the acoustic performance of the isolated contra-rotating open rotor is complicated and sensitive to any change in the flow velocity and the angle of incidence. The increasing flow velocity and the increasing angle of incidence show limited consistency in proportional trends in the directivity plots of sound pressure levels. It is anticipated that the findings will be different for a more realistic case of installed-on-model contra-rotating open rotor.