AERIALIST is a fundamental research project whose primary goal is to contribute to the full disclosure of the potential of metamaterials in aeroacoustics. The target engineering application is the mitigation of community noise of commercial aircraft. The need of such a research stems from the urgent need of breakthrough technologies and disruptive concepts to guarantee the sustainable development of the civil aviation. Indeed, the constantly growing market demand can be satisfied in an environment-friendly way only imposing strict constraints on noise and chemical emissions (see, e.g. ACARE Flightpath 2050). The substantial development saturation of current technologies makes any further incremental improvement extremely difficult to achieve. In such a context, the fundamental research on highly innovative concepts and methods assumes a key role, and AERIALIST's ambition is to contribute to this process. The project approach is built on four technological pillars addressed by four technical work packages:
1. Consolidate the theory of metamaterials and metacontinua in the aeroacoustic context and enhance and adapt suitable numerical tools for the prediction of their acoustic response in presence of flow (WP2);
2. Develop and assess the methodology for the additive manufacturing of devices based on metamaterials (WP3);
3. Perform the experimental analysis of the manufactured devices in the aeroacoustic wind tunnel (WP4);
4. Establish and assess the toolchain involving theoretical modelling, numerical simulations, realisation, and experimental validation and eventually provide recommendations for the development roadmap towards TRL of industrial relevance (WP5).
These objectives require, for their own nature, a comprehensive multidisciplinary approach covering the entire conceptual workflow of fundamental research, from the theoretical development to the practical realisation and experimental assessment. The entire workflow is developed In AERIALIST aiming at its effective future exploitation, keeping in mind the industrial requirements and the expected design constraints and targeting at an easy integration in the conceptual design of the future aeronautical concepts, also through the connection to other H2020 projects focused on higher TRLs.