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ambience: jet engine
The aircraft of the future will be quieter, more efficient and sport a radical new look – with a little help in the design from Mother Nature. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet.
“Aircraft noise has come down gradually over time. And what we’re trying to do is provide the advanced technologies that would enable people to bring the noise levels down even further.”
Dennis Huff is an engineer at Glenn Research Center. He says that while technologies have reduced aircraft noise significantly, more needs to be done.
“I would say the biggest challenge to developing a quieter jet engine is coming up with a way of doing it that doesn’t impact the performance. To do that, we need to develop some very different engine types. We’ve slowed the fan speed down and we’ve lowered the jet velocity down to where we’ve pretty much reached the limit as to how much noise reduction we can obtain from what we would call changing the cycle of the engine.”
According to Dennis Huff, aircraft design would have to radically change to meet the large noise reduction goal set by the FAA in the early 1970’s. That goal would reduce engine noise from this to this.
“You know, maybe in the future aircraft will look like a flying wing, with engines embedded inside the aircraft. We’re looking at advanced structure methods that morph the parts of the airplane, that bend the wing and the engine parts, if you will. They are going to have engine parts that are bending and morphing in a way that is more the way animals would do it. It’s more of a natural way of flying.”
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