Professor Dame Ann Dowling is President of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Royal Society. She is a mechanical engineer specialising in low emission combustion, acoustics and vibration in land vehicles and aircraft.

In September 2015, Professor Dame Ann Dowling spoke at The University of Nottingham as part of the Engineering Prestigious Lecture Series. The subject was “Towards a Silent Aircraft”.

Although aircraft noise has reduced considerably since the introduction of high speed jet transport, it is still presents a significant challenge.

In this lecture Professor Dame Ann Dowling discusses what generates noise on modern civil aircraft, and ways in which it can be reduced, and looks at what benefits a long-term radical rethink of aircraft configuration could bring in terms of reducing both noise and fuel burn.

Such benefits could be achieved not by a single design feature but through the integration of many technologies into an optimally designed aircraft.