Aircraft noise is a major concern to aircraft and aircraft engine manufacturers, airlines, airport authorities, government regulators and those who live near major airports. Consequently, it is very important to have rapid methods for the prediction of radiated noise, as well as methods to generate new designs with reduced emissions.
This was one of the engineering motivations behind the GEODISE eScience project. The research at Oxford was focussed on the development of a new 3D analysis capability, based on potential flow modelling, for the frequency-domain prediction of fan tone noise emissions from aeroengine inlets. The novel feature was the use of a hybrid spectral/finite element representation of the steady and harmonic unsteady potential, together with an axisymmetric preconditioner for the rapid iterative of the resulting equations. In related work, Alistair Laird looked at a multigrid preconditioner for solving the Helmholtz and aeroacoustic equations.