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Old 14th May 2008, 19:33
  #1124 (permalink)  
shawk
 
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You may have experience with a water faucet that sometimes makes a loud, low rumble or rattle that is accompanied by a small volume of water that comes out of the tap in discrete spurts of water. That's fluidic resonance in a pipe. Generally, you have to stop the flow to stop the effect. With the resonance gone, water flows normally.

I suspect that high frequency cavitation noise similar to the frequency plot would be inaudible through a typical thickness of aircraft aluminum at 10 meters. A lot depends on the placement of the pump and the shape of the surrounding structure but not much high frequency sound is likely to escape an airframe. From what I've seen, aircraft piping is very well attached and damped to prevent vibration that will cause rapid metal fatigue, so it might not act as a good acoustical conduit for high frequency sound.

If the fluidic resonance theory has much basis in reality, the likely noise is somewhere between 16Hz and 32Hz. This sound frequency range has a very good chance of escaping an airframe and be audible on the ground.

But I'm not certain that a CVR will record audio at 16Hz to 32Hz. They seem to be optimized to record human voice and use brick wall digital filters to not record below 100Hz.
The DFDR may not be sensitive enough to record the airframe effects of a small mass of fuel oscillating at 16Hz to 32Hz.
I hope that experts will add their knowledge to what parameters could be recorded.
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