Control of weak perturbations

Session 4aHT - Hot Topics: Aeroacoustics I: abstract 4aHT8Starting from p. 3207 of this journal issue is proceedings of ACOUSTICS 2012 HONG KONGWe define sound as being a weak perturbation in the properties of material consistent with the Navier-Stokes and continuity equations. Lighthill’s pioneering paper on aerodynamic noise gives an exact theory that enables interesting connections to be made between flow and sound. Aerodynamic noise being caused by quadrupoles is a good point of view, but what caused the quadrupoles? Were they possibly initiated by sound? Conclusions deduced from such a theory are not necessarily helpful, but they are true and might be very helpful indeed. The linear perturbations we call sound obey linear rules and it can be suppressed by anti-sound, a subject now becoming both practical and useful. The same must apply to any weak perturbation of a dynamic system perturbed from rest. Some perturbations are unstable and grow exponentially in their early weak state. They might be eliminated altogether by suppressing their linear form. The Rijke tube experiment shows that to be practical and shows also the close similarity that exists between acoustics and control theory. The lecture will give more examples of that type and suggest others that have yet to be demonstrated.published_or_final_versio

Young's experiment and the finiteness of information

Young's experiment is the quintessential quantum experiment. It is argued here that quantum interference is a consequence of the finiteness of information. The observer has the choice whether that information manifests itself as path information or in the interference pattern or in both partially to the extent defined by the finiteness of information.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, typos remove

Passive noise control strategies for jets exhausting over flat surfaces : an LES study

Unconventional aircraft propulsion configurations have to be considered in the future to address environmental issues, including air traffic noise that is know to affect communities surrounding airports. One approach involves rectangular jets in the vicinity of flat surfaces that are parallel to the jet axis in an attempt to shield the noise, but previous experimental work indicated that there is an increase in the noise generated by these configurations, mainly associated with the effect that the plate trailing edge exerts on the flow. In this work, we use large eddy simulations to investigate the potential of wall deformations at the plate trailing edge to reduce jet noise. We consider a high aspect ratio rectangular nozzle exhausting a jet over a flat surface in different configurations, and estimate the farfield noise using the Ffowcs Williams and Hawkins acoustic analogy. Because of the high aspect ratio of the rectangular nozzle, we approximate the jet as being two-dimensional, and use periodic boundary conditions in the spanwise direction. For the configurations that we considered here, the trailing edge deformations did not seem to affect the noise significantly; an overall sound pressure level in the order of 1-2 dB was observed for some selected cases

Accounting for convective effects in zero-Mach-number thermoacoustic models

This paper presents a methodology to account for some mean-flow effects on thermo-acoustic instabilities when using the zero-Mach-number assumption. It is shown that when a computational domain is represented under the M=0 assumption, a nonzero-Mach-number element can simply be taken into account by imposing a proper acoustic impedance at the boundaries so as to mimic the mean flow effects in the outer, not computed flow domain. A model that accounts for the coupling between acoustic and entropy waves is presented. It relies on a “delayed entropy coupled boundary condition” (DECBC) for the Helmholtz equation satisfied by the acoustic pressure. The model proves able to capture low-frequency entropic modes even without mean-flow terms in the fluctuating pressure equation

Helicopter tail rotor orthogonal blade vortex interaction

The aerodynamic operating environment of the helicopter is particularly complex and, to some extent, dominated by the vortices trailed from the main and tail rotors. These vortices not only determine the form of the induced flow field but also interact with each other and with elements of the physical structure of the flight vehicle. Such interactions can have implications in terms of structural vibration, noise generation and flight performance. In this paper, the interaction of main rotor vortices with the helicopter tail rotor is considered and, in particular, the limiting case of the orthogonal interaction. The significance of the topic is introduced by highlighting the operational issues for helicopters arising from tail rotor interactions. The basic phenomenon is then described before experimental studies of the interaction are presented. Progress in numerical modelling is then considered and, finally, the prospects for future research in the area are discussed