Experimental investigation of the laminar boundary layer vortex-shedding noise by an airfoil within a closed-vein wind tunnel

This study concerns the experimental characterization of trailing edge noise, the understanding of which is crucial for mitigating acoustic pollution across major industries. An aeroacoustic experiment is carried out using a closed-vein wind tunnel to investigate the laminar boundary layer vortex-shedding (LBL-VS) noise of a symmetric NACA0021 airfoil in low Reynolds number flows (Re ≤ 163,500). Steady aerodynamic and acoustic measurements are performed, with numerous conditions covered (flow velocity from 10 m/s to 24.5 m/s, airfoil incidence from −10° to 10°). The aerodynamic results reveal that, in the pre-stall regime, the airfoil’ suction side exhibits both a laminar separation bubble (LSB) and a trailing edge detached flow – which both make LBL-VS noise likely to occur. The acoustic results reveal that, when at low speed and moderate incidence, the airfoil emits one to two tones, which can be both attributed to LBL-VS noise. In particular, their respective frequency is seen to scale as the 0.8th power of the flow velocity, whereas varying linearly with the incidence. At higher speeds, these two tones vanish to the profit of other, more intense tonal emissions, whose frequency does not scale with the velocity nor the incidence. These tones are attributed to resonance effects coming from a retroaction of the reverberant environment onto the LBL-VS noise emission, which then locks-on to some of the duct resonant frequencies via an acoustic feedback loop. Revealing indirectly the presence of the pre-existing LBL-VS noise, these resonant tones emerge only when the flow velocity and incidence obey specific conditions, namely a roughly linear relationship.