This paper is concerned with the influence of camber on the noise of a wall-mounted finite airfoil with natural boundary layer transition. Tonal noise measurements taken in an aeroacoustic wind tunnel are presented for airfoils with aspect ratio of 2, NACAxx12 profile and camber between 0 and 6% at 40% chord. The results show camber is an important parameter that determines the operating conditions for which acoustic tone generation occurs and the number and intensity of the tones produced. Airfoils with 0%–2% camber have an acoustic signature that is dominated by a high amplitude primary tone, whereas the spectra of airfoils with higher camber of 4%–6% feature a more pronounced side tone structure. Tonal noise production does not collapse with lift coefficient, demonstrating that the local flow conditions influence the noise source. Tonal noise production is explained in terms of changes to mean flow topology, namely the location of flow separation, which is linked to tonal noise generation. Scaling of airfoil tonal noise is found to vary with angle of attack and pressure gradient. Empirical scaling laws for the primary tone frequency dependence on velocity are also derived for the cambered airfoils.
Experimental Investigation of Tip Vortex Formation Noise Produced by Wall-Mounted Finite Airfoils
(2021)
Motivated by promising results from experiments on the noise reduction performance of finite wall-mounted airfoils with a porous tip in an aeroacoustic wind tunnel, corresponding measurements were performed in a dedicated rotor test rig. This rig features a 3 kW direct-drive electric motor with three rotor blades of 1.1 m diameter. In the experiments, a variety of different tip modifications was tested regarding their noise reducing performance, including different porous materials that were manufactured using rapid prototyping. Acoustic measurements were performed at different rotationals speeds and blade angles using a ring-shaped microphone array consisting of 60 evenly spaced microphones. The rotational speed was measured using a laser sensor. Different beamforming algorithms were used in post-processing to help analyzing the data. The results show that porous tips can lead to a notable noise reduction at low frequencies, but a small penalty at medium and high frequencies which may be due to the surface roughness of the porous tips. This trend seems more severe for lower blade angles than for higher ones. These findings agree well with those obtained from the previous wind tunnel measurements.