Abstract:Reducing acoustic noise emission of commercial aircraft is of great interest to communities near airport. It is well recognized that the aircraft noise during the landing approach is mostly due to use of high lift devices. In this paper, in-flight deployable micro-tab devices are investigated for their suitability in aircraft landing nose control. This is accomplished with the use of the virtual-reality after scaled testing-simulation-validations approach. A scaled testing apparatus had to be designed to capture non-propulsive noise from aircraft during approach to validate the results of computational scaled simulation. This apparatus now serves as an anechoic wind tunnel at low Mach numbers and its design is detailed. We proposed use of lift generating micro-tab device that will allow reduced slat and/or flap settings during the approach thereby causing a reduction in airframe noise. Simulations based on a 1/3rd scaled B737 wing resulted in promising noise reductions for the case with deployed micro-tab.