Sound generated by flow over two traveling wavy foils in a side-by-side arrangement

Abstract

Numerical simulations are employed to investigate the sound generated by flow over two traveling wavy foils in a side-by-side arrangement by an immersed-boundary-method-based hybrid approach. The effects of Strouhal number (St), phase difference, and lateral spacing (S) between the foils on the flow performance and the sound pressure field are examined. The results imply that the sound produced by a single foil is dominated by the lift dipole, and that the low-amplitude–high-frequency foil can achieve higher thrust and higher sound pressure compared to the high-amplitude–low-frequency foil. For the two side-by-side foils (i.e., an in-phase and anti-phase foil system), the sound pressure fields exhibit distinct features. Specifically, a dipole-like pattern appears during in-phase motion, whereas a monopole-like pattern exists during anti-phase motion. Moreover, the magnitude of the sound pressure increases slightly with increasing S in the in-phase case. However, the sound pressure decreases rapidly when S < 0.7L (foil length) and then remains nearly unchanged when S > 0.7L in the anti-phase case. Furthermore, the anti-phase foil system could improve thrust by increasing power consumption and could generate lower sound pressure compared to the in-phase one due to the distinct differences in wake patterns. The present work is expected to improve the understanding of sound-generation mechanisms of fish-like locomotion and collective motion for relevant biomimetic underwater vehicles.