Buzz saw noise was discovered by aviation industry in the 1960's when the high bypass ratio fan engine was first used to power the jumbo jet aircraft. Buzz saw noise was generated when the high bypass ratio fan engine was run at take-off and max-cruise powers. The noise propagated through the engine inlet sounded like that of a buzz saw hard at work in the woods falling timbers. Noise engineers and technicians, the present inventor was one of them, coined this fluttering noise the buzz saw noise.
Paris air show would be the occasion and place to display the brand new jumbo jet 747 and that was the intention of the Boeing management. The new 747 jumbo jet engine JT9D, however, was experiencing fan stall and engine surge at high power settings; whether it was safe to fly over the ocean to Paris was the concern. Boeing management would like to witness in person how the engine operates before signing off the maiden flight trip; in doing so, they heard this funny engine noise at take-off power as if the fan blades are about to fly apart. “We need to fix It.”, was the comment. Noise research engineers asked the technicians on the test site. “what does this funny noise sounds like? “Sort of like a buzz saw.”
From ⅓-octave band noise spectrum analyses, the funny noise spectrum displayed high amplitude low frequency broadband noise, which was absent for low engine power settings. It was not evident that this noise was from the engine inlet, and it could be that the jet noise spilled over into the front hemisphere. But jet noise does not have this funny flutter characteristic.
Subsequent digital narrow band spectral analyses using the newly developed FFT (fast Fourier transform) technique render that the spectrum content of this funny engine noise consists of a multitude of tones at multiple of fan shaft frequency; and hence an alternative name of this funny engine noise was multiple pure tone noise.
At high power settings, the fan rotor blade tip of the high by-pass ratio fan engine rotates at transonic speeds. Aerodynamically, at this transonic speed, a fan blade leading edge shock system emerges, and this funny engine noise could be associated with this shock system. Shock is essentially a non-linear phenomenon, linear acoustic treatment of the shock associated noise is an over simplification.
Buzz saw noise control problem is a tall order and is not to be considered a simple task. Instead of a single blade passing frequency tone, there are many (say, 20 or 30) buzz saw tones waiting to be attenuated. The daunting task of controlling a multitude of buzz saw tones often precipitates a tendency of circumventing the control problem toward a psycho-acoustic opaque impression that these low frequency tones might be less troubling. Apparently, existing technique of inlet peripheral lining application is not adequate to deal with so many buzz saw tones. Adaptive control, wave cancellation techniques to deal with so many tones appear also hopeless.
Tangential blowing, otherwise known as wall jet, is a branch of viscous aerodynamics, which serves to inject a layer of grazing flow along a surface to control the complications of flows over the surface, such as excessive boundary layer development or flow separation.
In addition to the classical boundary layer flow control, we aim to introduce tangential blowing to improve buss saw noise attenuation performance of the buzz saw lining for community noise control and air craft cabin noise reduction.
Relevant technology landscape of the inlet invention includes the following areas:
The present patent application entitled “Aviation Engine Inlet with Tangential Blowing for Buzz Saw Noise Control” deals with the control and attenuation of buzz saw noise (tones) generated by high by-pass ration fan engine that propagates through the engine inlet and impresses upon airport communities and aircraft cabins.
The patent specification herein, comprises several embodiments of inlets constructed to control buzz saw noise. The disclosure herein describes these embodiments for aviation industry application and the high lights of the innovative steps including technology discoveries and unexpected experimental findings addressing the merits of the present invention and in turn substantiating the acute scope of the present patent claims.
Aviation industry's practice dealing with the control of buzz saw noise (tones) in the past 40 years has been using peripheral acoustic lining on the inlet interior wall to attenuate the buzz saw noise as it propagates through the inlet. The effectiveness of the peripheral acoustic lining is arguably limited in the attenuation of so many buzz saw tones. There has no innovation in the foreseeable future that would significantly improve the acoustic lining performance.
The present invention using tangential blowing airflow over the surface of the peripheral acoustic lining enables drastic attenuation performance improvement of the peripheral acoustic lining, as far as buzz saw tones are concerned.
Unexpected experimental results have demonstrated the robustness of the concept of tangential blowing airflow over the acoustic lining surface that all of the significant buzz saw tones are eliminated.
There are 15 Figures.
a and 4b show the lips of the tangential blowing slot.
a and 11b show an embodiment of a simple tangential blowing inlet with a fan bleed air source and compressor air bleed source.
In this disclosure is the embodiment of a class of inlets for aviation engine application. Aviation engine inlets are tubular in shape, which include an inlet lip surface, an inlet interior surface and an inlet exterior surface. The inlet exterior surface is an integral part or the nacelle cowling. The unique feature of this class of inlets is a tangential blowing slot, which is located immediately upstream from a segment of a buzz saw lining having an exposed surface defining a portion of the interior surface of the inlet. The lining is in turn connected to the fan casing at the engine fan face. See
A simplest configuration of an air worthy inlet invention layout including the above elements and including a quiet air supply system is shown in
A research and development model inlet was built and tested. The main parts of the model inlet test vehicle is shown in
The tangential blowing slot 21 is annular (
In this disclosure, the terms, blowing slot or tangential blowing slot, stands for annular tangential blowing slot which extends axial symmetrically 360 degrees in the circumferential direction all the way around the inlet axis with a slot lip in the shape of a downstream facing step (
An inviscid two-dimensional tangential flow (wall let) situation is shown in
This tangential blowing flow, or grazing flow, is important, as it creates, in the present application (FIGS. 1,2, 3, 4), a grazing flow field without local separation bubble downstream over the acoustic lining surface, causing, in general, an increase in the noise attenuation performance of the acoustic lining, and in particular, a large increase in the buzz saw noise attenuation performance of the buzz saw lining.
Instead of using a blowing slot with a downstream facing lip, a solid downstream facing step was also used and tested (
Further yet, the solid step-triggered boundary layer separation and reattachment (a local separation bubble with recirculation flow) is aerodynamically equivalent to that caused by a boundary layer blowing flow at an angle with respect to the surface (
When an isolated airfoil travels at a slight supersonic speed (transonic speed), two oblique shock waves begin to emerge at the leading edge of the airfoil (
Transonic fan rotor blade leading edge shock patterns are very localized confining only within a fraction of fan blade chord length in front of the fan rotor face. See
In a geometrically perfect fan where the blades are identical and the staggering of the blades are perfect the saw teeth are identical. A real fan, with imperfection, however small, the saw teeth would be different. Frequency analyses of the pressure trace of a real fan would yield pressure harmonics at multiple integer rotor shaft frequencies-buzz saw tone frequencies.
Buzz saw tone frequencies are at multiples of rotating frequency of the fan. The buzz saw tone order n is the multiplicity, the integer number n, of fan revolution. For example, the frequency of buzz saw tone order n is n times the revolution per second of the fan rotation. A typical buzz saw noise frequency spectrum of a fan with 17 blades is shown in
For each of the buzz saw tone order, there is a dominating circumferential mode. This dominating circumferential mode is absent in fan tone noise at low speed. Therefore to name buzz saw tones as “multiple pure tone” misses this dominating circumferential mode.
For large modern aviation engine fans, say 10 feet fan diameter, the transonic fan would be running at 40 revolutions per second. The frequencies of buzz saw tone orders are at multiples of increment of 40 cps. The buzz saw tones are getting crowded on the buzz saw tone frequency spectrum. For a fan of 32 blades, the fan tone is at a frequency of 1280 hertz, which is the frequency of buzz saw tone order 32. The first harmonic of the fan tone is at a frequency of 2560 hertz, the same frequency of buzz saw tone order 64. These frequencies are all within the audio frequency range (for example, music note C at 520 hertz). Thus, we have to deal with 64 buzz saw tones in the noise control of a large fan engine.
The robustness of the concept of tangential blowing in the improvement of the attenuation of buzz saw tones of the buzz saw lining is in its capacity in dealing with the attenuation of so many buzz saw tones at hand. A typical attenuation frequency spectrum of a buzz saw lining using tangential blowing is shown in
On account that the fan blade leading edge shock structure is confined within a small distance in front of the fan rotor face, the position of the buzz saw lining should be immediately in front of the fan face (
The shock pressure variations are of the order of psi. These large pressure variations call for a large-percentage-open-area perforated face sheet of a buzz saw lining with a perforated-sheet- honeycomb-core-back-plate-lining construction (
A typical layout of an air worthy aviation engine inlet with tangential blowing for buzz saw noise control is shown in
a shows a situation when the supply air can be extracted from the fan flow behind the fan rotor. This parasitic recirculation of the tangential blowing flow is contained within the nacelle cowling.
Forward looking, when the fan bleed parasitic recirculation flow is continuously activated during the entire airplane trip, future aviation engine fan design can be optimized with this fan bleed recirculation flow in mind.
The air source can also be from the engine low pressure compressor bleed. This bleed flow can be ducted through the hollow fan stator vanes across the channel of the fan by-pass flow (
Low frequency buzz saw noise emitted from the inlet can conveniently find its way into the aircraft cabins; to alleviate the cabin noise speech interference and to improve passenger comfort, the buzz saw noise control recirculation air flow can be activated during the entire journey of the fight.
A first variation of the tangential blowing inlet is shown in
A second variation of the tangential blowing inlet is shown in
A broader application of the tangential blowing inlet is shown in
With the availability of the tangential blowing airflow as depicted in the above embodiments, the inlet and nacelle can be reshaped and redesigned from the beginning to minimize its cruise drag and to reduce the trip fuel consumption. See
Aerodynamically, the tangential blowing airflow is a strong boundary layer control blowing airflow which can also prevent inlet boundary layer separation caused by cross wind or high angle of attack of inlet inflow.
An experimental program using the said model inlet,
Typical frontal noise contours are shown in
Tangential blowing has been born out in the experimentation to be critical; should blowing at an angle be the situation such that local flow separation bubble is induced (
The importance of the quiet air supply system cannot be overstated. High self-noise of the air supply can ruin the experiment. For example, air supply from the fan exhaust flow without an acoustically treated air supply system will render the experiment compromised, because self noise of air from the fan exhaust is high and the hard wall air supply system is a very good acoustic conduit.
A CD was submitted to PTO in connection with reference patent application Ser. No. 11/455,301. The CD discloses two test data points. Play back of the CD will experience the audio evidence of the unexpected effect of tangential blowing on inlet buzz saw noise abatement improvement. A copy of the CD will be submitted in connection with the present patent application if called for.
To facilitate developmental experimentation, the following values of the key design parameters are suggested, where D is the aviation engine fan diameter. It is understood that the design parameters are not limited by the following values.
Number | Date | Country | |
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61401135 | Aug 2010 | US |