Investigation of airfoil noise sources in turbulent flows

Abstract

The current proposal describes the research plan associated to the overseas internship (BEPE) of student Walter A. Ramirez. Mr. Ramirez is currently a MSc. student at Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Campinas, UNICAMP, funded by a FAPESP Scholarship, Process No. 2014/10166-6. The internship period abroad should be held at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, LLNL, located in Livermore, CA, USA. During this period, Walter will work under the supervision of Dr. Britton J. Olson who is currently a Computational Physicist at LLNL. Dr. Olson has extensive expertise in the fields of computational fluid dynamics, turbulence, compressible flows, numerical methods and high-order schemes. All these topics are related to the present research proposal. The main objective of the present work concerns the investigation of airfoil noise generated by the turbulent unsteady flow past an airfoil and its subsequent propagation to the far-field. This study is of paramount importance for the design of aerodynamic configurations such as wings and high-lift devices, as well as gas turbine blades and wind turbine blades, fans, rotors and propellers. Mr. Ramirez is currently investigating the vortex shedding tonal noise that arises in blunt trailing edges. In order to investigate the broadband noise content that arises from the interaction between turbulent boundary layers and the airfoil trailing edge, 3-D simulations must be carried out. These simulations should be performed at LLNL under the supervision of Dr. Olson.One should mention that Dr. Olson will be at UNICAMP as a visiting researcher in February and March of 2015 to initiate a collaboration with the current research group. His visit will be sponsored by the American Physical Society (APS). The present proposal is important in the context of Mr. Ramirez Msc. research, currently supported by FAPESP and it will also foster collaboration between UNICAMP and LLNL. (AU)