Experimental characterization of stall noise on a pitching airfoil in an anechoic wind tunnel

Abstract

Dynamic stall noise is one of the potential source of amplitude modulations associated with wind turbine noise. This phenomenon is related to the periodic separation and reattachment of the boundary layer on the wind turbine blade suction side during its rotation. Within the framework of the PIBE project (Predicting the Impact of Wind Turbine Noise), experiments were conducted in an anechoic wind tunnel in order to characterize stall noise on a pitching airfoil in both static and dynamic conditions. A first set of measurements was performed using an airfoil equiped with pressure taps to measure both steady and unsteady wall pressure as well as far-field acoustic pressure. These measurements were used to identify the noise regimes associated with different angles of attack, and to relate them with the boundary layer evolution. In a second experiment, synchronized flow and acoustic measurements have been obtained to identify the coherent aerodynamic structures responsible for the noise radiation. The velocity fluctuations evaluated from the time-resolved particle image velocimetry (TR-PIV) data are correlated with acoustic pressure to localize aeroacoustic sources, and various tools such as vortex detection methods and spectral proper orthogonal decomposition are applied to identify the nature of these sources.