Advanced Material
Modern aerodynamics is responding to the world energyâcrisis with the creation of the largest machines on Earth. Among many examples, large wings/blades are optimized to harvest energy from the wind (e.g. wind turbines) or to decrease fuel mass spent per payload (e.g. aircraft and propellers). Improving performance through upscaling comes with a huge increase of aeroacoustic noise, which directly affects the health of human population, as well as it obliges windâturbine manufacturers and airports to restrict the operating envelope of windâturbines and airplanes. The revolutionary concept, aiming at the abatement of airfoil selfânoise with a new flowâporous material constituted by âopen foams with directional cavitiesâ, allows shaping the macro characteristics (edge geometry, angles) of conventional passive noiseâreduction techniques, into the micro ones of the porous structure (porosity, cavity orientation), towards the creation of a material able to mitigate noise by both dampening flow fluctuations and reducing acoustic scattering. Addressing both hydrodynamic and acoustic aspects of noise is extremely challenging due to the different flowâscales and physical mechanisms involved. The proposed research aims at studying, designing and prototyping inserts for windâtunnel wings with open foams able to work at a multiâscale level.
Related Master Projects:
- Porous materials for noise reduction