On the Propagation of Sound in a High-Speed Non-Isothermal Shear Flow

Abstract

The propagation of sound in shear flows is relevant to the acoustics of wall and duct boundary layers, and to jet shear layers. The acoustic wave equation in a shear flow has been solved exactly only for a plane unidirectional homentropic mean shear flow, in the case of three velocity profiles: linear, exponential and hyperbolic tangent. The assumption of homentropic mean flow restricts application to isothermal shear flows. In the present paper the wave equation in an plane unidirectional shear flow with a linear velocity profile is solved in an isentropic non-homentropic case, which allows for the presence of transverse temperature gradients associated with the ***non-uniform sound speed. The sound speed profile is specified by the condition of constant enthalpy, i.e. homenergetic shear flow. In this case the acoustic wave equation has three singularities at finite distance (besides the point at infinity), viz. the critical layer where the Doppler shifted frequency vanishes, and the critical flow points where the sound speed vanishes. By matching pairs of solutions around the singular and regular points, the amplitude and phase of the acoustic pressure in calculated and plotted for several combinations of wavelength and wave frequency, mean flow vorticity and sound speed, demonstrating, among others, some cases of sound suppression at the critical layer.