Since both the aircraft and wind energy sectors are experiencing rapid growth, improvements must be made in terms of noise reduction as to enable growth whilst fulfilling the restrictions on noise pollution. An open-section vertical wind tunnel with an anechoic test chamber has recently been constructed at the Delft University of Technology, in part to facilitate research into this subject.

The purpose of this thesis project is the design, creation, testing and evaluation of a reconfigurable phased microphone array for this wind tunnel. Tests were performed with a calibrated sound source, and using conventional (delay-and-sum) beamforming, CLEAN-PSF and CLEAN-SC, performance was assessed in terms of sound power level and sound source location estimation.

The result of this iterative process is a practical, reconfigurable phased microphone array for acoustic analysis using beamforming, which is calibrated in third octave bands between 500 and 5000 Hz.