I was doing some quick reading about the technology that makes Porter Airlines‘ airplanes, the Bombardier Q400, quiet. It sounds like someone did a lot of research to make the technology work. Essentially it works like this:
- Noise is caused by air being displaced by the spinning of the propeller, which in turn hits the cabin and causes it to vibrate.
- A microphone captures the noise and sends information about it to a computer, which also knows the speed of the propellers.
- The computer does computations on this data, and then send this information to a device called an Active Tuned Vibration Absorbers (ATVAs) mounted on the fuselage frames.
- The ATVA produces counter vibrations which our out of phase of the original vibrations, which reduces the noise and vibrartions of the aircraft.
You can find more information, as well as some diagrams of this technology on Bombardier’s website. The noise suppression system was developed by Ultra Electronics based in the UK.
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