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

This paper presents the results of the demonstration campaign of the PAI! (PAI!), which is the outcome of Clean Sky GRC5! (GRC5!) project MANOEUVRES WP! (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 HMI! (HMI!). Within MANOEUVRES WP4 a PAI! demonstrator has been developed and integrated in AWARE, the industrial research flight simulator in-house developed 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 SA! (SA!) and finally to collect the Test Pilot impressions, opinions and suggestions. Outcomes are reported in the final part of the paper