A high-fidelity aeroacoustic simulation of a VTOL aircraft in an urban air mobility scenario

This paper concerns a high fidelity computational approach for the prediction of the acoustic impact of a VTOL vehicle operating in a urban area. The aerodynamic problem is solved with a free-wake vortex lattice boundary element method whereas the challenging acoustic scattering problem by a large urban area is carried out by coupling a Ffowcs Williams and Hawkings approach (FW-H) with a Boundary Element Method (BEM), accelerated with an Adaptive black-box Fast Multipole Method (AbbFMM). This work also demonstrates the set-up of a comprehensive numerical chain for assessing the noise of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicle during their whole operations meanwhile producing highly accurate noise shielding predictions when they are approaching in proximity of the urban areas.