The effect of upstream edge geometry on the acoustic resonance excitation in shallow rectangular cavities

Abstract

The flow-excited acoustic resonance phenomenon is created when the flow instability oscillations are coupled with one of the acoustic modes of a confined duct, which in turn generates acute noise problems and/or excessive vibrations. In this study, the effect of the upstream edge geometry on attenuating these undesirable effects is investigated experimentally for flows over shallow rectangular cavities with two different aspect ratios of L/D = 1 and 1.67, where L is the cavity length and D is the cavity depth, for Mach number up to 0.45. The acoustic resonance modes of the cavity are self-excited due to the development of free shear layers over the cavity mouth. Twenty four different upstream cavity edges are investigated in this study, including round edges, chamfered edges, vortex generators, and spoilers with different sizes and configurations. The results for each upstream cavity edge are compared with the base case where sharp edge is used. Most of the spoiler edges are found to be effective in suppressing the pressure amplitude of the excited acoustic resonance. Hot-wire measurements that were taken along the lateral direction downstream of the spoilers reveal the existence of secondary vortices generated by the spoilers, orthogonal to the cavity shear layer, which results in suppressing the resonance. The performance of each spoiler depends on its specific geometry (i.e. thickness, height, and angle) and the size and strength of the orthogonal vortices that can be generated. A summary of the results is presented in this paper.