Harvey H. Hubbard's contributions to aircraft noise control during his NACA-NASA career

Abstract

Following his service in the US Army Air Corps during World War ll, Harvey accepted a position at the NACA Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in 1945. Propeller aircraft dominated the air transport system at that time and he was among the first to perform research on the noise associated with propellers. In the next decade jet engine powered aircraft made their appearance and they became the focus of a rapidly growing acoustics research program at Langley. His pioneering experimental noise studies on propellers and jet engines provided significant insight and understanding of these two areas of concern. Foreseeing that additional research efforts would be required to address the many new aircraft noise issues, including the sonic boom and airport-community noise concerns of the proposed U.S. supersonic transport, he played a key role in getting NASA to expand its acoustic efforts. As a result, Harvey became NASA's technical focal point for all major acoustical activities. In this paper I will present some highlights of his research on propeller noise, jet noise, and sonic boom.