Demonstration and Testing of the Pilot Acoustic Indicator on a Helicopter Flight Simulator

This paper presents the results of the demonstration campaign of the Pilot Acoustic Indicator (PAI), which is the outcome of Clean Sky Green Rotorcraft 5 (GRC5) project MANOEUVRES Work Package (WP) 4. The PAI is an instrument conceived to present information on the current and expected noise emission levels to the rotorcraft pilot, to allow him/her to adequately react to incipient high noise conditions and effectively fly low acoustic impact procedures, such as in terminal manoeuvres. In-flight noise estimation is based on the interpolation within a pre-calculated database of acoustic hemispheres interrogated through the retrieval of a limited set of current rotorcraft state parameters. Noise information is subsequently synthesized in an index for cockpit display, through a dedicated Human Machine Interface (HMI). Within MANOEUVRES WP4 a PAI demonstrator has been developed and integrated in AWARE, the industrial research flight simulator developed in-house by Leonardo Helicopters, and a simulated flight PAI demonstration campaign has been performed, with the purpose to assess the capabilities of the proposed noise monitoring instrument in real-time operations, to evaluate the impact on the Test Pilot of the presence of the PAI in terms of workload and Situational Awareness and finally to collect the Test Pilot impressions, opinions and suggestions. Outcomes are reported in the final part of the paper.