Predictions of the Acoustic Nearfield on a Carrier Deck

This SBIR effort will develop the OptiNav Functional Beamforming tool to make noise source characterizations of aircraft/engines be simpler, faster, and cheaper. Many platforms do not have funding to afford the cost of current noise characterization procedures; however, this project directly addresses that gap. The work under this project will be to further develop the OptiNav, Inc. FB capability to handle jet plumes. Once this enhancement is successfully demonstrated during the first year of this project, the tool will be specialized to carry out two functions that were not previously available. The first will allow use of standard ANSI S12.75 and ANSI S12.76 microphone nearfield arrays (i.e., as opposed to the earlier planar array) to measure and characterize the jet aircraft source. The model will then be able to synthesize noise data at any location in the nearfield. The second function will be to develop a test procedure and processing toolset to make measurements of noise from flying aircraft using a ground microphone array and produce noise source “spheres” suitable for the Advanced Acoustic Modeling (AAM) noise exposure modeling tool.