Measurements and Predictions of Community Noise of a Pusher-Propeller General Aviation Aircraft

Community noise level should be considered as a performance parameter for commercial airplanes being their reached strong importance able to affect other aircraft parameters as speed, powerplant, geometrical layout and so on. Consequently it cannot be neglected since the initial phases of the design process of a new airplane. By virtue of these considerations Piaggio Aero Industries decided to launch a research program whose final objective is the integration of the acoustic requirements within the development activities of a new airplane. The aircraft community noise problem, at Piaggio Aero Industries, is an important issue. Their top product, the P180 aircraft, developed in the eighties, when the community noise requirements were a low priority compared with the interior noise levels, now deserves specific attention to such new environmental issues. A computer program for the prediction of the community noise has been developed within the research project with the aforementioned objectives. Parallely an experimental campaign has been carried out on the ground aimed to a validation of the computer program and to the definition of a database for further studies regarding the noise propeller efficiency and its exhaust flow interaction.