Development and Application of a Multi-Disciplinary Multi-Regime Design Methodology of a Low-Noise Contra-Rotating Open-Rotor

This paper focuses on the development and exploitation of a multi-disciplinary, optimization-assisted, design methodology for contra-rotating open-rotors. The design procedure relies on a two-step approach. An aero-mechanical optimization is first performed to generate a geometry with good performances over several high-speed points representative of a mission. This geometry is subsequently used as the baseline of an aero-mechanical-acoustic optimization focusing on interaction noise reduction at Cutback and Sideline low-speed points. In terms of design parameters, both rotors are modified for the first phase but only the upper part of the front rotor is altered for the noise minimization. A fully-automatic high-fidelity aero-mechanical-acoustic computational chain with fluid-structure coupling is exploited in combination with evolutionary algorithms assisted by surrogate models for the constrained-optimization process. The acoustic footprint is estimated by a simplified but fast and relevant formulation combining an unsteady lifting-line and an acoustic propagation method. The best geometry of the first design gains 1.2pt in weighted efficiency while respecting all the aero-mechanical constraints. The acoustic optimization shows that noise reduction at Sideline and Cutback points is strongly antagonistic. However, significant Sideline noise reduction from 3.5 to 5.5dB depending on the harmonics is achieved while maintaining Cutback noise and without major degradation of high-speed efficiency.