Search NASA⌕ Search

Engineering topics

Alexander N Carr

Publications and source records attributed to Alexander N Carr.

High Intensity Modal Impedance Tube Development at NASA Langley

A High Intensity Modal Impedance Tube (HIMIT) was developed for evaluation of acoustic liners in a normal incidence, high sound pressure level (SPL), and high frequency environment. Capabilities of the HIMIT are demonstrated here by testing three classes of acoustic liners: a narrow chamber liner, conventional single degree of freedom liners, and over-the-rotor liners. The experimental results are compared to results in NASA Langley's Normal Incidence Tube (NIT) for validation. The Zwikker and Kosten Transmission Line (ZKTL) model is also compared to the HIMIT results for selected configurations to study its applicability at high SPLs and frequencies. The HIMIT and NIT impedance spectra compare favorably up to 3.0 kHz, which is the upper frequency limit of the NIT analysis. The ZKTL model was used at frequencies up to 6.0 kHz and showed great comparison for the entire frequency range tested, indicating that the model may be used at high frequencies when the plane wave mode is dominant.

Chelsea Solano↗

Implementation of the NASA High Intensity Modal Impedance Tube

This paper provides a description of the High Intensity Modal Impedance Tube (HIMIT) and its use for the evaluation of acoustic liners. Tests conducted with two liners, one linear and one nonlinear, are used to evaluate the suitability of the HIMIT for evaluation at frequencies up to 6 kHz and sound pressure levels up to 155 dB. Two impedance eduction methods are used, one suitable for plane wave frequencies and the other applicable over the full frequency range. These educed impedances are compared against those computed with an impedance prediction method and against those educed with another zero-flow test rig. These results confirm that the HIMIT can be used with confidence for the evaluation of acoustic liners over these frequency and sound pressure level ranges.

impedance↗

Nonnormality of Sonic Boom Loudness Metrics in the Turbulent Atmospheric Boundary Layer at Large Lateral Distances from the Flight Path

Atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) turbulence causes variability of the sonic boom waveform at the ground. Recent numerical investigations of sonic boom propagation through kinematic velocity fluctuations indicate that loudness metric distributions are positively skewed relative to a normal distribution. This skewness depends on the propagation distance and turbulence intensity. Propagation simulations of N-waves and shaped booms through inhomogeneous ABL turbulence are presented. Meteorological conditions are varied to examine different daytime ABL conditions and their effect on sonic boom loudness distributions. Two outcomes are observed: 1) the loudness metric distributions become increasingly positively skewed as the propagation distance through the ABL increases, and 2) the distributions become increasingly positively skewed at the same lateral distance from the flight path as the convection level of the daytime ABL is increased. Thus, results indicate that ground level measurements of sonic boom loudness from flight tests performed at large lateral distances from the flight path may not be normally distributed, due to turbulence present in the ABL. (This research is supported by the Commercial Supersonic Technology Project of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant No. 80NSSC19K1685.)

sonic boom↗

Acoustic Mode Decomposition in Rectangular Ducts with Sheared Flow

The performance of new acoustic liner concepts are, in general, characterized and assessed in grazing flow rigs early in the development cycle. These test rigs expose an acoustic liner sample, installed on the side wall of the duct, to a grazing flow and incident acoustic field. The process to characterize these liners involves educing the impedance on the wall where the sample is installed and examining the acoustic power attenuation. Standard approaches to computing impedance or power attenuation generally consider only the effects of a 2D shear flow or uniform flow, on the acoustic field. In this study, the objective is to incorporate 3D shear flow effects in the analysis of acoustic mode attenuation in a rectangular duct flow rig. A modal analysis of microphone measurements obtained on the side walls of the duct upstream and downstream of the test section of the rig is developed. A Galerkin projection of the Pridmore-Brown equation is performed with Chebyshev basis functions in order to incorporate the effects of the Mach number profile on the computation of the axial wavenumber of each mode. Measurements of the Mach number profile are obtained in the test rig and used as input to compute the modes. Comparisons made between the sound field computed with traditional convective Helmholtz modes and the new procedure using Pridmore-Brown modes indicate that the computed acoustic field using Pridmore-Brown modes more accurately reconstruct the acoustic signals at each microphone in the array. The mode structure of the lowest order mode is shown to be significantly impacted by shear flow refraction effects, and higher order mode structures are also effected at higher frequencies and centerline Mach number. An assessment of the acoustic mode attenuation for two acoustic liner samples demonstrates that the computed mode amplitudes for both the traditional and new approach are in agreement for the lowest order mode, but discrepancies arise when higher order modes are the dominant component of the acoustic field.

Duct acoustics↗