Hybrid and fully electric propulsion system is a promising candidate for powering the next-generation passenger aircrafts, advanced air mobility vehicles as well as service drones. Unlike their counterparts found in conventional rotorcrafts, they often are smaller in size and operate at higher rotational speeds, and more importantly, they come in the more complex vehicular design and encounter significant installation effects (i.e., distributed, multi-rotor, etc.). In this seminar, I will present our investigation on the aeroacoustic characteristics of electric propellers, subjected to varying operating conditions. Subsequently, I would talk about the preliminary attempt to predict the noise from these configurations using data-driven methods, including discovering reduced-order noise models using scientific machine learning, which can help guide the design practices of the new vehicles in real-life engineering applications.

Dr. Nick Zang is currently a Senior Lecturer in Aerospace Engineering at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). Graduated from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) of Singapore, he mainly works in the intersection between fluid flows and aeroacoustics, that is to understand, predict and control aerodynamic noise based on insights from the physical flow mechanisms. Prior to joining QMUL, he has worked as a Lecturer at University of Bristol, where he has been pivotal to securing national funding for a new testbed for electric propulsion systems. He is also actively involved in the research of next-generation electric aircraft, with a particular interest in developing physics-based noise models using data-driven method.