An acoustic intensity-based method and its aeroacoustic applications

Aircraft noise prediction and control is one of the most urgent and challenging tasks worldwide. A hybrid approach is usually considered for predicting the aerodynamic noise. The approach separates the field into aerodynamic source and acoustic propagation regions. Conventional CFD solvers are typically used to evaluate the flow field in the source region. Once the sound source is predicted, the linearized Euler Equations (LEE) can be used to extend the near-field CFD solution to the mid-field acoustic radiation. However, the far-field extension is very time consuming and always prohibited by the excessive computer memory requirements. The FW-H method, instead, predicts the far-field radiation using the flow-field quantities on a closed control surface (that encloses the entire aerodynamic source region) if the wave equation is assumed outside. The surface integration, however, has to be carried out for each far-field location. This would be still computationally intensive for a practical 3D problem even though the intensity in terms of the CPU time has been much decreased compared with that required by the LEE methods. For an accurate far-field prediction, the other difficulty of using the FW-H method is that the complete control surface may be infeasible to accomplish for most practical applications.;Motivated by the need for the accurate and efficient far-field prediction techniques, an Acoustic Intensity-Based Method (AIBM) has been developed based on an acoustic input from an OPEN control surface. The AIBM assumes that the sound propagation is governed by the modified Helmholtz equation on and outside a control surface that encloses all the nonlinear effects and noise sources. The prediction of the acoustic radiation field is carried out by the inverse method with an input of acoustic pressure derivative and its simultaneous, co-located acoustic pressure. The reconstructed acoustic radiation field using the AIBM is unique due to the unique continuation theory of elliptic equations. Hence the AIBM is more stable and the reconstructed acoustic pressure is less dependent on the locations of the input acoustic data. The solution of the modified Helmholtz equation in the frequency domain is approximated by finite linear combination of basis functions. The coefficients associated with the basis functions are obtained by matching the assumed general solution to the given input data over an open control surface. The details on the optimization method, the instability issue and the numerical implementation of the AIBM have been discussed in the dissertation.;To verify the AIBM model, several acoustic radiation examples are solved, e.g. multiple sources radiation. The analytical acoustic pressure and its normal derivative on a partial spherical control surface are used as the input for the AIBM. The reconstructed acoustic field is obtained then compared with the analytical acoustic field. Excellent agreement is achieved and demonstrated. Some affecting factors on the AIBM, e.g. input locations and the signal-to-noise ratio, are also investigated. In addition, the potential of AIBM in broad-band noise prediction is examined in vortex/trailing edge interaction problem. Furthermore, a series of real world model problems are chosen to demonstrate the capability and potential of AIBM in CAA applications. Two important aircraft noises: turbofan noise and airframe noise, are studied in detail. Both the permeable surface FW-H equation method and the AIBM are used to evaluate the radiated field. The prediction results obtained from the AIBM and the FW-H integral method are compared with the solution from the CFD/CAA method. The accuracy and efficiency of both the AIBM and the FW-H integral method are analyzed.;In summary, the "open surface" AIBM makes up the drawbacks of traditional "closed surface" approaches. It provides an effective alternative for the far-field acoustic prediction of practical aeroacoustic problems.