Numerical study of acoustic modes in ducted shear flow

The propagation of small-amplitude modes in an inviscid but sheared mean flow inside a duct is studied numerically. For isentropic flow in a circular duct with zero swirl and constant mean flow density the pressure modes are described in terms of the eigenvalue problem for the Pridmore-Brown equation. Since for sufficiently high Helmholtz and wavenumbers, which are of great interest for applications, the field equation is inherently stiff, special care is taken to insure the stability of the numerical algorithm designed to tackle this problem. The accuracy of the method is checked against the well-known analytical solution for uniform flow. The numerical method is shown to be consistent with the analytical predictions at least for Helmholtz numbers up to 100 and circumferential wavenumbers as large as 50, typical Mach numbers being up to 0.65. In order to gain further insight into the possible structure of the modal solutions and to obtain an independent verification of the robustness of the numerical scheme, comparison to the asymptotic solution of the problem based on the WKB method is performed. The asymptotic solution is also used as a benchmark for computations with high Helmholtz numbers, where numerical solutions of other authors are not available. The bulk of the analysis concentrates on the influence of the wall lining. The proposed numerical procedure is adapted in order to include Ingard–Myers boundary conditions. In parallel with this, the WKB solution is used to check the numerical predictions of the typical behaviour of the axial wavenumber in the complex plane, when the wall impedance varies in the complex plane. Numerical analysis of the problem with zero mean flow at the wall and acoustic lining shows that the use of Ingard–Myers condition in combination with an appropriate slip-stream approximation instead of the actual no-slip mean flow profile gives valid results in the limit of vanishing boundary-layer thickness, although the boundary layer must be very thin in some cases