LES investigation of the wavy leading edge effect on cavitation noise

Abstract

This paper investigates the noise reduction performance of biomimetic hydrofoils with wavy leading edge and the corresponding mechanisms. We employ Large Eddy Simulation (LES) approach and permeable Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings (PFW–H) method to predict cavitation noise around the baseline and biomimetic hydrofoils. The results show that the wavy leading edge can effectively reduce the high-frequency noise, but has little effect on the low-frequency noise. Further analyses and discussions deal with the noise reduction mechanisms. The main source for the low-frequency noise is the cavity volume acceleration, while the wavy leading edge has little effect on it. The high-frequency noise sources, related to the surface pressure fluctuations and the turbulence characteristics, are significantly suppressed by the wavy leading edge, thus decreasing the high-frequency noise intensity. Our investigation indicates that the wavy leading edge has great prospects for cavitation noise reduction technique.