Reduction of noise generated by cylinder-airfoil interaction using grooved structures on the upstream cylinder

The cylinder-airfoil interaction noise can be reduced by changing the shape of the leading edge of the downstream airfoil. Generally, this way not only can reduce the interaction noise at middle and high frequency, but also can change the peak noise at the low frequency. This study attempts to affect the cylinder-airfoil interaction noise from the perspective of reducing the intensity of the upstream wake shedding vortex. In order to achieve this target, the equally spaced grooves were cut into the upstream cylinder, and the acoustic wind tunnel tests at various incoming velocities (20–60m·s−1) were conducted to compare the interaction noise of cylinder-airfoil (NACA0012) models. It is found that the grooved structure can effectively reduce the peak noise at characteristic frequencies bellow 1000 Hz and the broadband noise in the mid-frequency ranging from 1000 Hz to 3000 Hz, especially for the higher incoming velocity. Thereinto, the peak noise and overall sound pressure level (OASPL) with the grooved cylinder are reduced by 13 dB and 7.2 dB, respectively at the incoming velocity of 60 m·s−1. The numerical simulations based on the large eddy simulation (LES) and Ffowcs Williams–Hawkings (FW-H) acoustic analogy were performed to further reveal the mechanisms of noise reduction when the velocity is 60 m·s−1. The results show that the vortex shedding from cylinder wake is suppressed by the grooved cylinder and the vortex structure at the leading edge of the airfoil is also cut into the small-scale vortex structures by the grooved structure. The pressure fluctuation amplitude and the peak value turbulent kinetic energy in the wake of the grooved cylinder are significantly reduced. In addition, the further spectrum analysis reveals that the weak correlation of the vortex shedding on the grooved cylinder could lead to the suppression of the pressure fluctuation in the cylinder wake, and thereby the interaction noise is significantly reduced.