Patent 7735601 was granted and assigned to Rolls-Royce on June, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
In order to provide noise suppression, bumps or undulations are provided on a nozzle surface in order to vary the convergent-divergent ratio between that surface and an opposed nozzle surface. By such an approach, a circumferential variation in the shock cell pattern is created and the flow is deflected so as to enhance turbulent mixing thereby suppressing noise.