Evaluating Ground Effect on eVTOL Propeller Noise

Ground reflections are present on aeroacoustics analysis of rotor systems in eVTOL aircraft. This study employs an OpenFOAM solver to conduct a hybrid Large Eddy Simulation (LES)-Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) simulations to evaluate the noise generated by a scaled version of the propeller used on the 2017 Joby Aviation prototype hovering at varying distances from a ground plane. The objective is to assess the impact of proximity to a building top, a common obstacle encountered along an eVTOL flight path. Preliminary results have demonstrated promising alignment with experimental thrust values, suggesting the effectiveness of the chosen approaches.