Performance and Noise predictions of the Joby eVTOL Propeller NFAC Wind Tunnel Test Using GPU-accelerated Large-Eddy Simulations

Large eddy simulations (LES) of the Joby Aviation S4 propeller at the NFAC tunnel are performed with a GPUaccelerated low-Mach (Helmholtz) solver, and compared with experimental data provided by Joby at two flow conditions of hover and pure edgewise flow of 10 m/s. Accurate prediction of the laminar-turbulent transition was seen to be critical to the prediction of the noise sources for hover condition, with additional prominent noise sources found to be near the trailing edge and tip of the propeller. The dominant edgewise noise sources were seen to be from the dynamic outboard flow separation and reattachment from advancing to retreating side of the blade azimuth as well as the convective amplification of the acoustic waves from the 10 m/s flow. The far-field noise at the target set of microphone locations are predicted using the frequency-domain Ffowcs Williams-Hawking (FW-H) formulation. The A-weighted 1/3rd octave band results showed a good prediction of the noise compared with the experiments.