N101-039 TITLE: Innovative Quiet Unmanned Air Vehicle Technologies

TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Air Platform, Weapons

ACQUISITION PROGRAM: PMA-263, Navy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Program

RESTRICTION ON PERFORMANCE BY FOREIGN CITIZENS (i.e., those holding non-U.S. Passports): This topic is "ITAR Restricted." The information and materials provided pursuant to or resulting from this topic are restricted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), 22 CFR Parts 120 - 130, which control the export of defense-related material and services, including the export of sensitive technical data. Foreign Citizens may perform work under an award resulting from this topic only if they hold the "Permanent Resident Card", or are designated as "Protected Individuals" as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3). If a proposal for this topic contains participation by a foreign citizen who is not in one of the above two categories, the proposal will be rejected.

OBJECTIVE: Develop novel approaches and applications to reduce the acoustic emissions of current Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) without significantly impacting vehicle performance (speed, endurance, payload, etc.).

DESCRIPTION: Due to the surveillance nature of many UAV missions, the intent of this work is to reduce the acoustic detection probability for a given system. This includes evaluating different technologies to reduce acoustic emissions of propulsion systems (i.e. exhaust/muffler and propeller designs), and technologies to facilitate acoustically improved vehicle integration. Since each UAV system has unique noise issues, this effort seeks to identify technologies and approaches that show improved acoustic performance with an understanding of the impact to the rest of the UAV performance parameters. Novel hardware approaches should have size, power and weight considerations that are appropriate to small UAV systems.

The basic problem to overcome is the physical limitation of integration while providing effective noise reduction to an observer, and potential performance impacts of adding noise reduction devices to a relatively small airframe. Any proposed approach should provide improved noise emissions to observers on the ground and address the potential impact to vehicle performance.

A longer term objective will be to demonstrate the maximum capability of combined technologies on a prototype UAV of comparable size and performance of a Shadow UAV.

PHASE I: Demonstrate the technical feasibility of reducing acoustic emissions on UAVs without significant impact to UAV performance. Develop a detailed analysis of predicted performance of the proposed technology.

PHASE II: Develop, demonstrate, and validate the proposed technology integrated on a UAV

PHASE III: Transition the developed technology for fleet and commercial use and provide a detailed supportability plan.

PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL/DUAL-USE APPLICATIONS: Noise reduction technologies have applications in almost any mechanical environment. Specifically, commercial UAV and even Remote Controlled (RC) Hobby vehicles are limited in uses due to noise emissions. Additionally, technologies developed under this work could be applicable to other devices with similar noise sources such as automobiles, fans/propellers, industrial facilities, and other mechanical systems. The added restrictions for application to UAVs make the technologies more attractive to other applications in that they may be lower weight, smaller, have lower performance impact.

REFERENCES:
1. Robinson, Rick, "Aeroacoustics Research Could Quiet Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)", January 22nd, 2009, Physorg.com.

2. Chavanne, Bettina, "Work on Quiet UAVs Shows Promise" April 7, 2009, Aviation Weekly.

3. Fidler, Kenneth, "Subsystem Acoustic Testing of a VTOL Ducted Propeller UAV", March 2004, AMRDEC Technical Report AMR-SS-04-05.

4. Lo, K., Ferguson, B., "Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Localization Using Ground-Based Acoustic Sensors", 2004.

KEYWORDS: UAV; noise reduction; acoustics; aeroacoustic; low noise; quiet UAV

** TOPIC AUTHOR (TPOC) **

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