TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Air Platform, Electronics

ACQUISITION PROGRAM: PMA-265 F/A-18 and EA-18 Program Office

The technology within this topic is restricted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), which controls the export and import of defense-related material and services. Offerors must disclose any proposed use of foreign nationals, their country of origin, and what tasks each would accomplish in the statement of work in accordance with section 3.5.b.(7) of the solicitation.

OBJECTIVE: Design, develop, and demonstrate a practical optimization methodology to develop site specific noise reduction profiles for aircraft flight operations while minimizing nonstandard flight procedures.

DESCRIPTION: The development of optimization routines to determine operational flight procedures that effectively reduce community noise exposure while minimizing nonstandard flight procedures is needed to address the growing concerns of the communities around our airfields. Innovative technology developed under this effort will provide a cost effective near-term solution for jet noise reduction for the current fleet of jet aircraft by working with operational parameters. Recent work in advanced operational noise reductions for civil aircraft using noise optimization algorithms have been ongoing in Europe for several years and more recently in the U.S. For military aircraft, no tools are yet available for operational noise abatement optimization. The tool must balance the community noise exposures with flight procedure constraints based on aircraft performance, flight safety, and local air traffic procedures. For the noise calculation, the tool should use current aircraft noise models, such as NoiseMap, Rotorcraft Noise Model, and Integrated Noise Model. However, the use of the new military aircraft noise model, Advanced Aircraft Noise Model (AANM), being developed through SERDP SI-1304 should improve the effectiveness of the tool. Once developed, this optimization tool could be applied to any military aircraft at any airfield for relatively small incremental costs and assess the potential for significant reduction in community noise. The initial noise reduction from operational modifications is expected to be approximately 3 to 6 dB DNL for localized areas around an airfield.

In assessing the status quo for operational noise abatement, it is important to understand the relative magnitudes of the respective noise impacts of the civilian transport and high performance military fleets. While the noise radiated by production commercial aircraft has decreased by 15 EPNdB from 1960 to 1995, the noise from DoD high performance aircraft has increased over the same period. Thus, although the number of single event noise exposures from high performance military aircraft is very small compared to those commercial aircraft, the civil and high performance military fleets have produced similar EPNdB levels for the last 15 years. It is envisioned that small changes in military aircraft operational procedures have the potential to make enormous reductions in overall noise received by the population around airfields.

Noise abatement via aircraft operations modification has been well studied for civil aircraft since the 1960s. Research on military aircraft noise abatement dramatically increased in the 1970s, and operational procedures were understood to be a key part of overall military aviation noise control. However in spite of this early work, no optimization tools exist even today for military aircraft operational noise abatement around DoD airfields. In fact, very few airfields use operations modifications at all for noise reduction. Those that do, have poor, limited tools that are impossible or difficult to verify.

PHASE I: Develop and demonstrate the technical feasibility of producing as a minimum a hardware, software, and analysis design for optimization methodology. Data requirements, data gaps, and risk areas should be defined. The procedures for overcoming data gaps should be described as well as risk areas.

PHASE II: Based on results of Phase I, design and develop a prototype software system, and demonstrate the optimization effectiveness for a concept airfield and an actual airfield.

PHASE III: Transition technology to military and commercial airfields and customers.

PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL/DUAL-USE APPLICATIONS: Military application includes noise reduction tool at individual airfields, noise reduction in training areas, quiet mission profiles. Commercial applications include noise reduction for air tours over National Parks, airports and residential communities.

REFERENCES:
1. L. J. J. Erkelens, "Advanced noise abatement procedures for approach and departure," AIAA-4858, Presented at AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conf. and Exhib., 5-8 August 2002, Monterey, CA.

2. J.-P. B. Clarke, N. T. Ho, L. Ren, J. A. Brown, K. R. Elmer, W.-O. Tong, and J. K. Wat, "Continuous descent approach: Design and flight test for Louisville International Airport," J. Flight, 41(5) 1054-1066 (2004).

3. B. J. Ikelheimer, "Advanced simulation noise model for modern fighter Aircraft," Proc. Noise-Con 05, Minneapolis, MN, Oct. 2005.

4. K. L. Gee, "Prediction of nonlinear jet noise propagation," Ph.D. Thesis, The Pennsylvania State University, Aug. 2005.

5. A. Waitz, S. P. Lukachko, and J. J. Lee, "Military aviation and the environment: Historical trends and comparison to civil aviation," J. Aircraft 42(2) 329-339 (2005).

6. J. A. Zalovick and W. T. Schaefer, Jr., "NASA Research on noise-abatement approach profiles for multiengine jet transport aircraft," NASA TN-D-4044, June 1967.

7. H. C. Quigley, C T. Snyder, E. M. Fry, L J. Power, R. C Innis, and W. L. Copeland, "Flight and simulation investigation of methods for implementing noise-abatement landing approaches," NASA TN D-5781, May 1970.

8. P. A. Shahady, "Military Aircraft Noise," J. Aircraft 12(8) 653-657 (1975).

KEYWORDS: acoustics; community noise; aircraft noise; noise reduction; noise abatement

** TOPIC AUTHOR (TPOC) **

DoD Notice:   Between November 12 and December 7, 2008, you may talk directly with the Topic Authors to ask technical questions about the topics. Their contact information is listed above. For reasons of competitive fairness, direct communication between proposers and topic authors is not allowed starting December 8, 2008, when DoD begins accepting proposals for this solicitation.

However, proposers may still submit written questions about solicitation topics through the DoD's SBIR/STTR Interactive Topic Information System (SITIS), in which the questioner and respondent remain anonymous and all questions and answers are posted electronically for general viewing until the solicitation closes. All proposers are advised to monitor SITIS (09.1 Q&A) during the solicitation period for questions and answers, and other significant information, relevant to the SBIR 09.1 topic under which they are proposing.

If you have general questions about DoD SBIR program, please contact the DoD SBIR Help Desk at (866) 724-7457 or email weblink.