Multirotor drone noise: numerical approach for aeroacoustics and in-flight noise prediction

Nowadays, multirotor drone usage has become widespread for various purposes: amateur or professional videos, building inspection, civil security, military defense, etc. But this usage increase has also seen growing concerns about community noise annoyance in inhabited areas, acoustic detectability for security and military purposes, or remote wildlife monitoring. Predicting the drone noise can now be accurately achieved thanks to computational aeroacoustics (CAA). The present work deals with the aeroacoustic simulation and measurement of a quadcopter drone and in-flight condition prediction. The CAA simulation of a single rotor is first compared with test bench measurements in an anechoic room. Comparison for the full drone is then derived from this single-rotor comparison. Finally, the study is further extended to in-flight comparisons, in order to show that CAA simulation can help design quieter drones in real operating conditions.