Modelling of Helicopter Noise in Arbitrary Maneuver Flight using Aeroacoustic Database

This paper presents a computational tool to predict the ground noise footprint of a complete helicopter in an arbitrary flight (including maneuvers). It relies on a hybrid approach: generation of an arbitrary trajectory, checks of flyability and comfort, and propagation of noise down to the ground are performed numerically. On the other hand, noise emission characteristics are provided by a database generated from aeroacoustic flight tests (PAVE 2004). The underlying idea is that the instantaneous noise emission of the whole helicopter can be characterized by the instantaneous value of few aerodynamic parameters. The paper presents a step-by-step validation of the approach and shows ground noise footprint in good agreement with experimental data.