Evaluation of Synthetic Jet Flow Control Technique for Modulating Turbulent Jet Noise

Abstract

The use of a synthetic jet as the flow control technique to modulate a turbulent incompressible round jet was explored and assessed by numerical simulations. The flow response was characterised in terms of turbulent statistics and acoustic response in the far-field. A quasi-Direct Numerical Simulation (qDNS) strategy was used to predict the turbulent effects. The Ffowcs-Williams and Hawkings (FWH) acoustic analogy was employed to compute the far-field acoustic response. An amplification effect of the instabilities induced by the control jet was observed for some of the parameters explored. It was observed that the control technique allows controlling the axial distribution of the production and dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy, but with respect to the acoustic aspects, the appearance of a greater number of noise sources was observed, which in the far-field, resulted in an increase from 1 to 20 dB of the equivalent noise for the different operating parameters of the control technique studied.