Hush kit

A hush kit installed on a Swedish Air Force Sud Aviation Caravelle.
Rolls Royce Conway Mk508 (1959) used in Boeing 707-420 at Flugausstellung Hermeskeil, pic1

A hush kit is an aerodynamic device used to help reduce the noise produced by aircraft jet engines. These devices are typically installed on older turbojet and low-bypass turbofan engines, as they are much louder than later high-bypass turbofan engines.[1]

Hush kits are used because the engines on jet aircraft generate a large amount of noise, which significantly increases noise pollution near airports.[2]

Design

The most common form of hush kit is a multi-lobe exhaust mixer. This device is fitted to the rear of the engine and mixes the jet core's exhaust gases with the surrounding air and a small amount of available bypass air. Modern high-bypass turbofan engines build on this principle by utilizing available bypass air to envelop the jet-core exhaust at the rear of the engine, reducing noise.

Most hush kits make further modifications to the exhaust, including acoustically treated tailpipes, revised inlet nacelles and guide vanes. They reduce the forward propagating, high-pitched noise caused by the small, high-speed fan.[1]

This kind of high-pitched noise is much less of an issue on modern high-bypass turbofan engines as the significantly larger front fans they employ are designed to spin at much lower speeds than those found in older turbojet, and low-bypass turbofan, engines.

Use

Modern aircraft equipped with high-bypass turbofan engines are designed to comply with contemporary aviation noise abatement laws and ICAO regulations. Several older aircraft that are still in service (typically in a cargo capacity) have hush kits retrofitted so that they are able to conform with noise regulations needed to operate in many commercial airports.[1] Some of the examples include:

Hush kits can also be found on small business jets and other aircraft that are too small to be fitted with bulky high-bypass turbofan engines. In many cases, these aircraft are manufactured with hush kits installed as a more economical way to meet noise restrictions than what would be needed to make expensive engine or design changes. The Gulfstream II and Gulfstream III are examples of these aircraft.

Impact

Hush kits can adversely affect the range and performance of the aircraft they are fitted to because of the extra weight. It also reduces engine performance and aerodynamic efficiency. For example, the hush kit fitted to the Gulfstream II adds 106 kilograms (234 lb) to the total airplane weight of 65,500 lb (29,700 kg), causing around a 1.6% reduction in aircraft range.[3]

Meanwhile, the hush kit for the Gulfstream G-III jets weighs about 170 kg (370 lb) and cause a calculated 2% drop in range, although the reduction in range has not been noticed during actual flights.[4]

On a larger aircraft, like Federal Express's Boeing 727s, the hush kits add 410 kg (900 lb) of extra weight (total airplane weight up to 86,000 kg (190,000 lb)) and this results in an overall 0.5% increase in fuel burn for short trips (but no measurable increase for long flights).[5][6]

Regulation

While hush kits effectively reduce noise emissions from older aircraft, noise cannot always be reduced to the level of modern planes at a reasonable cost.[7]

In 1999, this concern led to a regulatory dispute between the United States and the European Union, where the EU proposed a new noise ordinance which effectively prevented the use of hush kits in Europe. This regulation threatened to reduce the value of the mostly-American used airplanes that employed hush kits and hurt the profits of American hush kit manufacturers.[1] EU Regulation 925/99 was passed over US threats to ban Concorde but was superseded (and effectively repealed) by EU Directive No. 2002/30/EC issued March 26, 2002.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Mola, Roger A. (January 2005). "Hush Kits". Air & Space/Smithsonian. Retrieved 25 December 2016.
  2. ↑ "Hush Kits". Air & Space Magazine. Retrieved 2018-05-07.
  3. ↑ "Quiet Technology Aerospace". Qtaerospace.com. 2003-03-20. Archived from the original on 2012-07-21. Retrieved 2013-01-20.
  4. ↑ "Hubbard Aviation Technologies QS3 Hush Kit". Hubavtech.com. Retrieved 2013-01-20.
  5. ↑ "Stage 3 Jet Kit - Airplane Noise". Fedex.com. Retrieved 2013-01-20.
  6. ↑ "Heavy Freight Shipping - Heavy Freight - FedEx Heavy Freight". Fedex.com. Retrieved 2013-01-20.
  7. ↑ Majcher, Kristin (July 5, 2013). "Operators face scrapping aircraft as FAA tightens business jet noise rules". Flight Global. Retrieved April 1, 2018.
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