Trailing-edge serrations have proven to be valid applications of trailing edge noise mitigation for an airfoil, while the physical noise reduction mechanism has not been adequately studied. We performed simulations employing Large-eddy simulation and the Lighthill–Curle method to reveal the variation in the hydrodynamic field and sound source due to the trailing edge serrations. The grid resolution and computational results were validated against experimental data. The simulation results show that: the trailing edge serrations impede the growth of spanwise vortices and promote the development of streamwise vortices near the trailing edge and the wake; the velocity fluctuations in the vertical cross-section of the streamwise direction near the trailing edge are reduced for the serrated airfoil, thereby obviously reducing the strength of the pressure fluctuations near the trailing edge; and the trailing edge serrations decrease the distribution of the sound source near the trailing edge and reduce the local peak value of sound pressure level in a specific frequency range as well as the overall sound pressure level. Moreover, we observed that, in the flow around the NACA0012 airfoil, the location where the strong sound source distribution begins to appear is in good agreement with the location where the separated boundary layer reattaches. It is therefore effective to reduce trailing edge noise by applying serrations on the upstream of the reattachment point.

In this study, two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) numerical calculations were conducted to investigate the aerodynamic characteristics, especially the unsteady aerodynamic characteristics and attitude stability of a bio-inspired corrugated airfoil compared with a smooth-surfaced airfoil (NACA2408 airfoil) at the chord Reynolds number of 4000 to explore the potential applications of non-traditional, corrugated dragonfly airfoils for micro air vehicles (MAVs) or micro-sized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) designs. Two problem settings were applied to our numerical calculations. First, the airfoil was fixed at a constant angle of attack to analyze the aerodynamic characteristics and the hydrodynamic moment. Second, the angle of attack of airfoils was passively changed by the fluid force to analyze the attitude stability. The current numerical solver for the flow field around an unsteady rotating airfoil was validated against the published numerical data. It was confirmed that the corrugated airfoil performs (in terms of the lift-to-drag ratio) much better than the profiled NACA2408 airfoil at low Reynolds number $Re=4000$ in low angle of attack range of $0^{\circ }$ – $6^{\circ }$ , and performs as well at the angle of attack of $6^{\circ }$ or more. At these low angles of attack, the corrugated airfoil experiences an increase in the pressure drag and decrease in shear drag due to recirculation zones inside the cavities formed by the pleats. Furthermore, the increase in the lift for the corrugated airfoil is due to the negative pressure produced at the valleys. It was found that the lift and drag in the 2D numerical calculation are strong fluctuating at a high angle of attacks. However, in 3D simulation, especially for a 3D corrugated airfoil with unevenness in the spanwise direction, smaller fluctuations and the smaller average value in the lift and drag were obtained than the results in 2D calculations. It was found that a 3D wing with irregularities in the spanwise direction could promote three-dimensional flow and can suppress lift fluctuations even at high angles of attack. For the attitude stability, the corrugated airfoil is statically more unstable near the angle of attack of $0^{\circ }$ , has a narrower static stable range of the angle of attack, and has a larger amplitude of fluctuations of the angle of attack compared with the profiled NACA2408 airfoil. Based on the Routh–Hurwitz stability criterion, it was confirmed that the control systems of the angle of attack passively changed by the fluid force for both two airfoils are unstable systems.

Large-eddy simulation (LES) of separated turbulent flow through an asymmetric plane diffuser is investigated. The outcome of an actual LES depends on the quality of the subgrid-scale (SGS) model, as well as the accuracy of the numerical method used to solve the equations for the resolved scales. In this paper, we focus on the influence of SGS models for LES of the diffuser flow through using a high-order finite difference method to solve the equations for the resolved scales. Six resolutions are computed to investigate the influence of mesh resolution. Four existing SGS models, a new one-equation dynamic SGS model and a direct numerical simulation (DNS) are conducted in the diffuser flow. A series of computational analyses is performed to assess the performance of different SGS models on the coarse grids. By comparison with the experiment and DNS, the results produced by the new one-equation dynamic model give better agreement with experiment and DNS than the four other existing SGS models.

The effect of the number of waves and the width of the ridge and valley in chord direction for a wavy airfoil was investigated at the angle of attack of $0^{\circ }$ and Reynolds number of ${10}^3$ through using the two-dimensional direct numerical simulation for four kinds of wavy airfoil shapes. A new method for parameterizing a wavy airfoil was proposed. In comparison with the original corrugated airfoil profile, the wavy airfoils that have more distinct waves show a lower aerodynamic efficiency and the wavy airfoils that have less distinct waves show higher aerodynamic performance. For the breakdown of the lift and drag concerning the pressure stress and friction stress contributions, the pressure stress component is significantly dominant for all wavy airfoil shapes concerning the lift. Concerning the drag, the pressure stress component is about $75\%$ for the wavy airfoils that have more distinct waves, while the frictional stress component is about $70\%$ for the wavy airfoils that have less distinct waves. From the distribution of pressure isoline and streamlines around wavy airfoils, it is confirmed that the pressure contributions of the drag are dominant due to high pressure on the upstream side and low pressure on the downside; the frictional contribution of the drag is dominant due to large surface areas of the airfoil facing the external flow. The effect of the angle of attack on the aerodynamic efficiency for various wavy airfoil geometries was studied as well. Aerodynamic shape optimization based on the continuous adjoint approach was applied to obtain as much as possible the highest global aerodynamic efficiency wavy airfoil shape. The optimal airfoil shape corresponds to an increase of $60\%$ and $62\%$ over the aerodynamic efficiency and the lift from the initial geometry, respectively, when optimal airfoil has an approximate drag coefficient compared to the initial geometry. Concerning an fixed angle of attack, the optimal airfoil is statically unstable in the range of the angle of attack from $-1^{\circ }$ to $6^{\circ }$ , statically quasi-stable from $-6^{\circ }$ to $-2^{\circ }$ , where the vortex is shedding at the optimal airfoil leading edge. Concerning an angle of attack passively varied due to the fluid force, the optimal airfoil keeps the initial angle of attack value with an initial disturbance, then quickly increases the angle of attack and diverges in the positive direction.

Aerodynamic noise from wind turbine blades is one of the major hindrances for the widespread use of large-scale wind turbines generating green energy. In order to more accurately guide wind turbine blade manufacturers to optimize the blade geometry for aerodynamic noise reduction, an acoustic model that not only understands the relation between the behavior of the sound source and the sound generation, but also accounts for the compressibility effect, was derived by rearranging the continuity and Navier–Stokes equations as a wave equation with a lump of source terms, including the material derivative and square of the velocity divergence. Our acoustic model was applied to low Mach number, weakly compressible turbulent flows around NACA0012 airfoil. For the computation of flow fields, a large-eddy simulation (LES) with the dynamic Smagorinsky subgrid scale (SGS) model and the cubic interpolated pseudo particle (CIP)-combined unified numerical procedure method were conducted. The reproduced turbulent flow around NACA0012 airfoil was in good agreement with the experimental data. For the estimation of acoustic fields, our acoustic model and classical sound source models, such as Lighthill and Powell, were performed using our LES database. The investigation suggested that the derived material derivative of the velocity divergence plays a dominant role as sound source. The distribution of the sources in our acoustic model was consistent with that of the classical sound source models. The sound pressure level (SPL) predicted based on the above-mentioned LES and our newly derived acoustic model was in reasonable agreement with the experimental data. The influence of the increase of Mach number on the acoustic field was investigated. Our acoustic source model was verified to be capable of treating the influence of Mach numbers on the acoustic field.