This paper is concerned with rapid-distortion theory on transversely sheared mean flows which (among other things) can be used to analyse the unsteady motion resulting from the interaction of a turbulent shear flow with a solid surface. It extends previous analyses of Goldsteinet al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 736, 2013a, pp. 532–569;NASA/TM-2013-217862, 2013b) which showed that the unsteady motion is completely determined by specifying two arbitrary convected quantities. The present paper uses a pair of previously derived conservation laws to derive upstream boundary conditions that relate these quantities to experimentally measurable flow variables. The result is dependent on the imposition of causality on an intermediate variable that appears in the conservation laws. Goldsteinet al.(2013a) related the convected quantities to the physical flow variables at the location of the interaction, but the results were not generic and hard to reconcile with experiment. That problem does not occur in the present formulation, which leads to a much simpler and more natural result than the one given in Goldsteinet al.(2013a). We also show that the present formalism yields better predictions of the sound radiation produced by the interaction of a two-dimensional jet with the downstream edge of a flat plate than the Goldsteinet al.(2013a) result. The role of causality is also discussed.

Noise measurements of heated axisymmetric jets at a fixed supersonic acoustic Mach number indicate that the acoustic spectrum reduces when the temperature ratio increases. The “spectral quietening” effect has been observed both experimentally and computationally using large Eddy simulations. It was explained by Afsar, Goldstein, and Fagan [AIAA J. 49, 2522 (2011)] through the cancellation introduced by the enthalpy flux/momentum flux coupling term using the generalized acoustic analogy formulation. But the parallel flow assumption is known to give inaccurate predictions at high jet speeds. In this paper, we therefore extend the nonparallel flow asymptotic theory of Goldstein, Sescu, and Afsar [J. Fluid Mech. 695, 199 (2012)] for the vector Green’s function of the adjoint linearized Euler equations in the analogy. Using the steady Reynolds averaged Navier Stokes calculation for the jet mean flow, we find that the coupling term propagator is positive-definite and asymptotically subdominant at low frequencies corresponding to the peak jet noise when nonparallel flow effects are taken into account and self-consistent approximations for the turbulence structure are made. We then assess the validity of the non-parallel flow-based acoustic analogy model by computing the overall sound pressure level (OASPL) at various observation angles. Interpretation of the latter allows a more rational explanation of the quietening effect. In general, our noise predictions are in very good agreement with acoustic data beyond the peak frequency.

We investigate flows interacting with square and fractal shape multi-scale structures in the compressible regime for Mach numbers under subsonic and supersonic upstream conditions using large-eddy simulations. We also aim at identifying similarities and differences that these interactions have with the corresponding interactions in the canonical incompressible flow problem. To account for the geometrical complexity associated with the fractal structures, we apply an immersed boundary method to model the no-slip boundary condition at the solid surfaces, with adequate mesh resolution in the vicinity of the small fractal features. We validate the numerical results through extensive comparisons with experimental wind tunnel measurements at a low Mach number. Similar to the incompressible flow case results, we find a breakup of the flow structures by the fractal plate and an increase in turbulent mixing in the downstream direction. As the Mach number increases, we observe noticeable wake meandering and higher spread rate of the wake in the lateral direction perpendicular to the streamwise–spanwise plane. Although not significant, we quantify the difference between the square and the fractal plates using two-point velocity correlations across the Mach number range. The wakes generated by the fractal plate in the compressible regime showed lower turbulent kinetic energy and energy spectra levels compared to those of the square case. Moreover, results in terms of the near-field pressure spectra seem to indicate that the fractal plate has the potential to reduce the aerodynamic noise.

This paper uses asymptotic analysis within the generalized acoustic analogy formulation (Goldstein 2003 JFM 488 , 315–333. ( doi:10.1017/S0022112003004890 )) to develop a noise prediction model for the peak sound of axisymmetric round jets at subsonic acoustic Mach numbers (Ma). The analogy shows that the exact formula for the acoustic pressure is given by a convolution product of a propagator tensor (determined by the vector Green's function of the adjoint linearized Euler equations for a given jet mean flow) and a generalized source term representing the jet turbulence field. Using a low-frequency/small spread rate asymptotic expansion of the propagator, mean flow non-parallelism enters the lowest order Green's function solution via the streamwise component of the mean flow advection vector in a hyperbolic partial differential equation. We then address the predictive capability of the solution to this partial differential equation when used in the analogy through first-of-its-kind numerical calculations when an experimentally verified model of the turbulence source structure is used together with Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes solutions for the jet mean flow. Our noise predictions show a reasonable level of accuracy in the peak noise direction at Ma = 0.9, for Strouhal numbers up to about 0.6, and at Ma = 0.5 using modified source coefficients. Possible reasons for this are discussed. Moreover, the prediction range can be extended beyond unity Strouhal number by using an approximate composite asymptotic formula for the vector Green's function that reduces to the locally parallel flow limit at high frequencies. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Frontiers of aeroacoustics research: theory, computation and experiment’.

This paper is concerned with rapid distortion theory on transversely sheared mean flows that (among other things) can be used to analyse the unsteady motion resulting from the interaction of a turbulent shear flow with a solid surface. It expands on a previous analysis of Goldsteinet al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 824, 2017, pp. 477–512) that uses a pair of conservation laws to derive upstream boundary conditions for planar mean flows and extends these findings to transversely sheared flows of arbitrary cross-section. The results, which turn out to be quite general, are applied to the specific case of a round jet interacting with the trailing edge of a flat plate and are used to calculate the radiated sound field, which is then compared with experimental data taken at the NASA Glenn Research Center.