Noise control for high subsonic jet flows by inner wall treatment

Abstract Subsonic jet nozzles, commonly used in passenger aircrafts, generate significant noise that travels both downstream and upstream due to large-scale or fine-scale turbulence in the jet plume. To reduce jet noise, a novel wall treatment method, termed the wavy inner wall (WIW), is proposed. With this method, the smooth inner wall near the exit of the nozzle is replaced by treated walls that carry small wavy patterns. Numerical simulations were conducted to investigate the effects of the WIW treatment. Large eddy simulations (LES) were used to predict the unsteady flow field and the far-field noise, followed by the analogy method proposed by Ffowcs Williams and Hawkings. To better understand the mechanism behind the noise reduction achieved by the WIW treatment, the shear-layer instability, radial and azimuthal auto-correlation functions, turbulent kinetic energy, and acoustic source term from the Tam-Auriault (TA) jet-noise model were analyzed. Results indicated that the WIW treatment advances the onset of jet flow instability in the shear-layer, leading to the early breakdown of jet shear-layer and production of different scales of downstream turbulent structures. As a result, the distribution and production of turbulent kinetic energy are affected, and the generation and emission of jet noise are controlled. The WIW treatment enables the control of fine scale turbulence, resulting in the reduction of mid- to high-frequency noise in the far field, while ensuring a low thrust loss. This feature makes the WIW method a promising approach for jet noise control.