NASA's Adaptive Phase Control Architecture Technology

NASA Langley Research Center has developed a method for adjusting relative angular positions of propeller and/or rotor blades to modify the spatial distribution of noise.

Community noise has been identified as a major barrier to entry-into-service of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and urban air mobility (UAM) platforms. For these applications, distributed electric propulsion (DEP) systems are becoming increasingly popular because of their ability to distribute propulsors in many locations on the vehicle. New small/medium UAV's and UAM's, and thin/short haul aircraft concepts and demonstrators exploit DEP systems for different purposes. However, given the problem of community noise, NASA engineers have modified the vehicle noise directivity pattern by controlling the relative angular positions of the propulsor blades, in order to direct noise away from sensitive areas.

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