Silent Aircraft Initiative

The Silent Aircraft Initiative (SAI) is a multidisciplinary program funded by the Cambridge-MIT Institute to enable competitive differentiation through innovative low-noise strategies in aircraft and engine system design and operation. The research aspect of this project aims to define the physical limitations to, and corresponding benefits of, the ‘value of silence’. Assessment of these involves the technology, the business case, the regional and national economics, and the surrounding policy issues. This project involves many researchers at Cambridge University and at MIT.

Official Silent Aircraft Initiative website

Prof. Willcox leads the Silent Aircraft Design and Acoustic Integration research component of the SAI project. This component provides the integrative capability required by creating a framework for aircraft conceptual design with noise as the primary objective, and using this to provide quantitative assessment of performance and noise characteristics at the aircraft system level. The first step is development of a Silent Aircraft Design Framework which integrates existing aircraft design codes with acoustic and economic models and adapts them to innovative low-noise aircraft designs. We will then use this framework plus inputs from the operations and technology components to evaluate new low noise designs.