Boundary-element analysis of the noise scattering for urban aerial mobility vehicles: Solver development and assessment

Abstract Urban aerial mobility (UAM) vehicles with multipropeller configurations have attracted considerable attention in recent years. However, previous investigations have mainly focused on the aerodynamic noise from individual propellers, with limited focus on the fuselage’s sound scattering effects which can alter the far-field noise directivity. In this work, an efficient boundary element solver for sound scattering was developed to fill this gap. The solver employs hierarchical matrices to save computational cost. The benchmark examples showed high accuracy and good scalability. A representative vehicle model was then chosen, and the propeller noise was simulated using rotating sources. Results show that the shielding effect in the fuselage/propeller configuration can produce an apparent noise reduction and redirect sound energy distribution, suggesting the importance of considering the fuselage in low-noise UAM development.