Living next to an airport is no picnic. Sure, you'll never miss a flight because you're stuck in traffic, but you're constantly dealing with jet fuel fumes, a house that shakes with each and every takeoff and the near constant roar of giant aircraft engines.
The Airbus Noise Technology Centre, or ANTC, a collaboration between the European jet maker and the University of Southampton's School of Engineering Sciences, is working on the noise problem. For years the school has collaborated with Airbus on different projects, and now it's taking the partnership up a notch, rolling out a bunch of advanced technologies and research projects in order to meet some very aggressive noise-reduction targets.
The ANTC has plenty on its plate, but GreenAir Online says its number one priority is figuring out how to meet a target of cutting
"perceived" noise in half by 2020, and eliminating all noise nuisance outside of airport bounds within the same time period.
Those targets have been set by the Advisory Council for Aeronautical Research in Europe, a group made up of government ministries, universities and transportation heavyweights like Thales and BEA Systems. Hitting them is not going to be easy, as it will require double the progress of what's happening currently.
To make it happen, the ANTC is working on a batch of very cool projects.
In one, a research group is using a new engineering tool to evaluate the potential viability and effectiveness of new low-noise landing-gear designs. Another investigates if a porous treatment applied to an aircraft's slats might cut airframe noise. Carrying out these projects requires some cutting-edge technology: ANTC is using wind tunnels and anechoic chambers, and running data through a high-order computational aeroacoustics program called SotonCAA.
ANTC is has 15 supersmart faculty, fellows and students on the payroll, but they need more. If you happen to be a postdoc and you're looking for a new gig, ANTC is hiring.
Photo: Airbus Media
