Evaluation of metal foam liners for broadband noise reduction of turbofan engines

Previous research shows that open-celled metal foam liners have the potential to provide substantial aircraft noise reduction benefits. Our recent results show that their normal incidence sound absorption performance can be further improved by compressing them uniformly; this compression reduces their effective pore size and increases the thermoviscous losses. Further, their performance may be optimized by stacking foams with varying degrees of compression and creating a step-wise effective relative density gradient. Here, we present the results from our recent experiments, evaluating the attenuation performance of such a step-wise gradient metal foam liner using the Advanced Noise Control Fan (ANCF). Liner spools with two different step-wise configurations were fabricated and tested using the ANCF test rig at the Notre Dame Turbomachinery Laboratory. Farfield data was gathered with the liner spool mounted at the inlet and aft locations. In this paper, we present our results comparing the attenuation performance under both test conditions as compared to measurements obtained using a hard wall baseline configuration. Our results show that step-wise metal foam configurations can provide robust acoustical performance for aircraft noise reduction applications.