Techsburg, AVEC, and Virginia Tech to present paper at The Vertical Flight Society’s 81st Annual Forum May 20-22 in Virginia Beach, VA entitled "Experimental and Numerical Acoustic Scaling Investigation of a Low Tip Speed eVTOL Proprotor in Hover"

This paper shares results from work carried out during a NASA Phase I STTR project led by Technology in Blacksburg, Inc. (Techsburg, Inc): "Acoustics and Performance Scaling of a Low-Noise Tiltrotor for Urban Air Mobility Applications" (NASA Contract 80NSSC23PB607). Team partners were AVEC, Inc. and Virginia Tech, and this project follows work by Fleming, et. al. (2022), documenting results for a 5-blade low-noise proprotor measured outdoors at the Virginia Tech Drone Cage. The paper for VFS Forum 81 will share recent acoustic and aerodynamic hover experimental results for geometrically-identical 18-inch and 36-inch diameter proprotors, and compare to PowerFLOW aeroacoustic simulation results for 18-inch, 36-inch, and 90-inch diameter proprotors operating in the presence of atmospheric turbulence. The NASA Phase I STTR included testing and simulation studies in relevant wind environments, with comparison of outdoor testing to more controlled wind tunnel testing as well as the effects of geometric scaling. Proprotor geometry and test data are available to the eVTOL community to support validation efforts for prediction tools. Aerodynamic and narrowband acoustic data was shared with NASA as a Phase I deliverable for the 18-inch and 36-inch diameter sizes.