The Sound of the Drone Uprising – Aeroacoustics of Drone Blades

This paper explores the relatively new phenomena of drones and thesurrounding aero-acoustic function of their blades. Drones have become increasingly accessible to the public ranging insize and price from £20 to £10000+. The need to further understand theaeroacoustics surrounding drones has thus increased. Existing research has tended to focus on health,safety and security,with a limited amount ofresearch in the last few years on the acoustics of drones. This paper explores changing the shape of the wing to reduce the sound emission from the drone in terms of both sound level and tonality. Four blade designs have been tested on a Phantom IV drone to estimate total sound power. It was found that it is possible to significantly reduce sound emission whilst maintaining the drone’s ability to hover.