Calculation of Aerodynamic Noise of Wing Airfoils by Hybrid Methods

This research is situated in the field of Computational AeroAcoustics (CAA). The thesis focuses on the computation of the aerodynamic noise generated by turbulent flows around wing, fan, or propeller airfoils. The computation of the noise radiated from a device is the first step for designers to understand the acoustical characteristics and to determine the noise sources in order to modify the design toward having acoustically efficient products. As a case study, the broadband or trailing-edge noise emanating from a CD (Controlled-Diffusion) airfoil, belonging to a fan is studied. The hybrid methods of aeroacoustic are applied to simulate and predict the radiated noise. The necessary tools were researched and developed. The hybrid methods consist in two steps simulations, where the determination of the aerodynamic field is decoupled from the computation of the acoustic waves propagation to the far field, so the first part of this thesis is devoted to an aerodynamic study of the considered airfoil. In this part of the thesis, a complete aerodynamic study has been performed. Some aspects have been developed in the used in-house solver SFELES, including the implementation of a new SGS model, a new outlet boundary condition and a new transient format which is used to extract the noise sources to be exported to the acoustic solver, ACTRAN. The second part of this thesis is concerned with the aeroacoustic study where four methods have been applied, among them two are integral formulations and the two others are partial-differential equations. The first method applied is Amiet’s theory, implemented in Matlab, based on the wall-pressure spectrum extracted in a point near the trailing edge. The second method is Curle’s formulation. It is applied proposing two approaches; the first approach is the implementation of the volume and surface integrals in SFELES to be calculated simultaneously with the flow in order to avoid the storage of noise sources which requires a huge space. In the second approach, the fluctuating aerodynamic forces, already obtained during the aerodynamics simulation, are used to compute the noise considering just the surface sources. Finally, Lighthil and Möhring analogies have been applied via the acoustic solver ACTRAN using sources extracted via SFELES. Maps of the radiated noise are demonstrated for several frequencies. The refraction effects of the mean flow have been studied.Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur et technologie