An Acoustic Source Model for Applications in Low Mach Number Turbulent Flows, Such as a Large-Scale Wind Turbine Blade

Hui Tang,Xingzhong Li,Yulong Lei

doi:10.3390/en12234596

Abstract

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.

Highlights

At the present time, wind energy is a renewable, sustainable source of power, and one of the most rapidly developing electricity production fields worldwide [1]
Because the experimentally estimated sound source which was caused by the separation bubble was confirmed near the leading-edge, we focused on that region
To verify our sound source model, we focused on comparing the sound pressure level (SPL) profile calculated from the Lighthill–Curle’s method which is widely used for sound pressure prediction, and the SPL profile obtained by our sound source model

Summary

Introduction

Wind energy is a renewable, sustainable source of power, and one of the most rapidly developing electricity production fields worldwide [1]. Based on the European Union’s (EU’s) report of the gross electricity consumption from wind power, a more than threefold increase between. Wind energy increase will mean that many more wind turbines will be installed, inevitably closer to more people and their residences. Wind turbine noise is one of the major hindrances for the widespread use of wind energy. Surveys [3] show that noise from a wind turbine is annoying to people and that is perceived to be more annoying than other forms of industrial noise at Energies 2019, 12, 4596; doi:10.3390/en12234596 www.mdpi.com/journal/energies. To accommodate the expected increase in the number of installed wind farms and to reduce public disquiet, there is need to reduce wind turbines’ noise

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Results

Conclusion