Prediction and Control of the Vibroacoustic Environment During a Launch Sequence

The complexity of the current launch platforms makes their maintenance and operation very costly. In order to successfully design the next generation platforms, it is necessary to understand the complex, multi-disciplinary environments that exists during a launch sequence. The proposed research and development effort will use state of the art techniques in the various fields involved to compute the virboacoustic environment during launch. The physical insight gained from these models will help guide the design of a new cost-effective launch platform. In particular, the problem of unsteady turbulent flows will be addressed using a newly developed turbulence modeling approach known as partially averaged Navier-Stokes (or PANS). Using PANS nearfield results, the acoustic farfield will be obtained through the use of acoustic analogies. In addition, various passive and active control techniques will be assessed to effectively reduce noise levels in the vicinity of the launch platform.