BlackboardProfessor Krothapalli Has Developed A Quieter Fighter Jet Engine
Beginning this December, noise suppression technology developed at Florida State University will become standard equipment on U.S. Navy F-18 fighter jets. The technology, which is patent-pending, was developed at the FSU Fluid Mechanics Research Laboratory under the direction of Anjaneyulu Krothapalli. Don Fuqua Eminent Scholar in Engineering and Science at FSU and the chairman of the university's department of mechanical engineering. He is developing technologies that achieve a quieter jet engine in a lab that is unlike any other in the nation. "Nobody wants to live near military bases that fly jet fighters, but residential communities do spring up near them," Krothapalli said. "There is a need to provide jet noise mitigation to minimize their environmental noise exposure of military aircraft, which are louder than commercial jets. The public may not accept the operation of these military jets so close to commercial and residential complexes unless their noise can be effectively controlled"
The research is being funded by a $2.6 million, three-year Office of Naval Research grant. The work is further funded y NASA Ames Research Center and Boeing to apply the technologies to civilian aircraft. Krothapalli conducts his investigations in a $1.2 million noise suppression lab that is a bunker-Like building with a mechanism that uses air compressed at 2,000 pounds per square inch to simulate a rocket or jet engine being fired, and a separate chamber that measures the noise levels of the firing. FSU mechanical engineering Professor Luis Lourenco, Assistant Professor David Cartes and Visiting Professor Vijay Arakeri, with graduate students Brent Greska and Tom Joseph, participate in the research program
