Acoustic Grid Research Articles

A hybrid finite volume - spectral element method for aeroacoustic problems

We propose a hybrid Finite Volume (FV) - Spectral Element Method (SEM) for modeling aeroacoustic phenomena based on the Lighthill's acoustic analogy. First the fluid solution is computed employing a FV method. Then, the sound source term is projected onto the acoustic grid and the inhomogeneous Lighthill's wave equation is solved employing the SEM. The novel projection method computes offline the intersections between the acoustic and the fluid grids in order to preserve the accuracy. The proposed intersection algorithm is shown to be robust, scalable and able to efficiently compute the geometric intersection of arbitrary polyhedral elements. We then analyze the properties of the projection error, showing that if the fluid grid is fine enough we are able to exploit the accuracy of the acoustic solver and we numerically assess the obtained theoretical estimates. Finally, we address two relevant aeroacoustic benchmarks, namely the corotating vortex pair and the noise induced by a laminar flow around a squared cylinder, to demonstrate in practice the effectiveness of the projection method when dealing with high order solvers. The flow computations are performed with OpenFOAM [50], an open-source finite volume library, while the inhomogeneous Lighthill's wave equation is solved with SPEED [34], an open-source spectral element library.

Early detection of human impacts using acoustic monitoring: An example with forest elephants.

The impacts of human activities and climate change on animal populations often take considerable time before they are reflected in typical measures of population health such as population size, demography, and landscape use. Earlier detection of such impacts could enhance the effectiveness of conservation strategies, particularly for species with slow population growth. Passive acoustic monitoring is increasingly used to estimate occupancy and population size, but this tool can also monitor subtle shifts in behavior that might be early indicators of changing impacts. Here we use data from an acoustic grid, monitoring 1250 km2 of forest in northern Republic of Congo, to study how forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) assess risk associated with human impacts across a landscape that includes a national park as well as active and inactive logging concessions. By quantifying emerging patterns of behavior at the population level, arising from individual-based decisions, we gain an understanding of how elephants perceive their landscape along an axis of human disturbance. Forest elephants in relatively undisturbed forests are active nearly equally day and night. However, they become more nocturnal when exposed to a perceived risk such as poaching. We assessed elephant perception of risk by monitoring changes in the likelihood of nocturnal vocal activity relative to differing levels of human activity. We show that logging is perceived to be a risk on moderate time and small spatial scales, but with little effect on elephant density. However, risk avoidance persisted in areas with relatively easy access to poachers and in more open habitats where poaching has historically been concentrated. Increased nocturnal activity is a common response in many animals to human intrusion on the landscape. Provided a species is acoustically active, passive acoustic monitoring can measure changes in human impact at early stages of such change, informing management priorities.

Spatial and temporal activity patterns among sympatric tree-roosting bat species in an agriculturally dominated great plains landscape.

In agroecosystems, bats can provide a critical ecosystem service by consuming night-flying insect pests. However, many bats also face intense population pressures from human landscape modification, global change and novel diseases. To better understand the behavioral activity of different bat species with respect to space, time, habitat, and other bat species in this environment, we investigated species correlations in space and time over row crop agricultural fields. We used acoustic grids to document spatial and temporal co-occurrence or avoidance between bats and recorded eight species across the 10 field sites we sampled. All species significantly overlapped in two-dimensional space and displayed considerable temporal overlap during the night, yet often exhibited significantly different temporal activity patterns, suggesting fine scale partitioning behavior. Conversion of land to agriculture is likely to increase globally, making it critical to better understand how bat species interact with one another and the landscape to facilitate persistence in these human altered ecosystems.

Dual Mesh Technique for Hydroacoustic Prediction of Cavitating Flows around a Three-Dimensional Bullet

Nowadays, hydroacoustics is of great importance. A major source of underwater noise is cavitation noise. One of the difficulties in cavitation noise prediction is its complex formation mechanism. In this paper, a cavitating bullet is taken as the research object, and detailed numerical simulation research of the local cavitation for this three-dimensional model is carried out. Ffowcs Williams and Hawkings equation (FW-H) is adopted. The quadrupole term is obtained by the direct volume integration method. Furthermore, dual mesh technique is adopted to achieve fast calculation. The results show that the dual mesh technology reduces the computational complexity of the nonlinear sound pressure significantly. With the appropriate acoustic grid size, the dual mesh method can ensure the same accuracy as the CFD grid. This provides a reliable way for the calculation of nonlinear sound pressure in the cavitation phenomenon.

Lighthill's analogy applied to a automotive turbocharger compressor

Computing transient CFD simulations of turbocharger compressors is computationally very demanding. It is of fundamental importance to resolve turbulent structures at the location of their generation and to establish a fine enough grid to allow propagation of the resolved structures. This results in high-resolution grids, existing of more than 20 million cells. Applying Lighthill's analogy, it is possible to only resolve turbulent structures at their location of generation and compute the pressure propagation by using an additional, not that demanding, acoustic grid. This allows using coarser CFD grids in the inlet and outlet section. For transferring Lighthill's source terms from the CFD to the acoustic grid, advanced interpolation algorithms are used. The simulation results are validated by measurements of a cold gas test rig are considered.

Boots on the ground: the role of passive acoustic monitoring in evaluating anti-poaching patrols

SummaryPassive acoustic monitoring is rapidly gaining recognition as a practical, affordable and robust tool for measuring gun hunting levels within protected areas, and consequently for its potential to evaluate anti-poaching patrols’ effectiveness based on outcome (i.e., change in hunting pressure) rather than effort (e.g., kilometres patrolled) or output (e.g., arrests). However, there has been no report to date of a protected area successfully using an acoustic grid to explore baseline levels of gun hunting activity, adapting its patrols in response to the evidence extracted from the acoustic data and then evaluating the effectiveness of the new patrol strategy. We report here such a case in Cameroon’s Korup National Park, where anti-poaching patrol effort was markedly increased in the 2015–2016 Christmas/New Year holiday season to curb the annual peak in gunshots recorded by a 12-sensor acoustic grid in the same period during the previous 2 years. Despite a three- to five-fold increase in patrol days, distance and area covered, the desired outcome – lower gun hunting activity – was not achieved under the new patrol scheme. The findings emphasize the need for adaptive wildlife law enforcement and how passive acoustic monitoring can help attain this goal, and they warn about the risks of using effort-based metrics of anti-poaching strategies as a surrogate for desired outcomes. We propose ways of increasing protected areas’ capacity to adopt acoustic grids as a law enforcement monitoring tool.

Hybrid aeroacoustic approach for the efficient numerical simulation of human phonation.

A hybrid aeroacoustic approach was developed for the efficient numerical computation of human phonation. In the first step, an incompressible flow simulation on a three-dimensional (3 D) computational grid, which is capable of resolving all relevant turbulent scales, is performed using STARCCM+ and finite volume method. In the second step, the acoustic source terms on the flow grid are computed and a conservative interpolation to the acoustic grid is performed. Finally, the perturbed convective wave equation is solved to obtain the acoustic field in 3 D with the finite element solver CFS++. Thereby, the conservative transformation of the acoustic sources from the flow grid to the acoustic grid is a key step to allow coarse acoustic grids without reducing accuracy. For this transformation, two different interpolation strategies are compared and grid convergence is assessed. Overall, 16 simulation setups are compared. The initial (267 000 degrees of freedom) and the optimized (21 265 degrees of freedom) simulation setup were validated by measurements of a synthetic larynx model. To conclude, the total computational time of the acoustic simulation is reduced by 95% compared to the initial simulation setup without a significant reduction of accuracy, being 7%, in the frequency range of interest.

The Pressure Pulsation and Spectrum Analysis of Ducted Propeller Based on SST k-ω model

The pressure pulsation and spectrum of the four-blade ducted propeller are numerical simulated by CFD method. The flow field inside and behind the propeller is analysed by using SST k-ω Model. On the basis of the flow field, an acoustic grid is built. By setting several monitoring points in the area behind the propeller, the pressure pulsation in these points are recorded. Time domain curves of pressure pulsation in different points show a similar changing circle. After Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT), the blade passing frequency is calculated. The pulsation value near the hub is smaller than that at the tip of the blade. The fundamental frequencies of the pressure pulsations of the wake field are the same at different axial positions. The rotation of the blade has a great influence on the pressure pulsation near the blade. The pressure pulsation amplitude is larger near the propeller, and the amplitude at a far distance is smaller.

Computational Aeroacoustics for Rotating Systems with Application to an Axial Fan

A hybrid aeroacoustic formulation, which is well suited for the computation of rotating systems, is presented. It is based on a decomposition of flow (incompressible part) and acoustic (compressible part) quantities, is applicable to high-Reynolds-number and low-Mach-number flows, accounts convective effects on the wave propagation, and features only a scalar unknown (i.e., the acoustic velocity potential), thus reducing the computational effort significantly. To show the accuracy and applicability of our approach, the proposed method is applied to an axial fan. Thereby, the experimental setup is discussed in detail, and measurements are performed toward the flow and acoustic field. Furthermore, the computation of the flowfield is presented along with the evaluation of the acoustic source terms, its efficient and accurate interpolation to the acoustic grid, and the computation of the generated acoustic sound. The comparison of local and global physical quantities, both for the flow as well as for acoustics, shows good agreement and demonstrates the applicability of the present aeroacoustic approach for rotating systems.

An In Situ Measurement System for Characterizing Orbital Debris

This paper presents the development of an in situ measurement system known as the Debris Resistive Acoustic Grid Orbital Navy/NASA Sensor (DRAGONS). The DRAGONS system is designed to detect impacts caused by particles ranging from 50 micrometers to 1 mm at both low-earth and geostationary orbits. DRAGONS utilizes a combination of low-cost sensor technologies to facilitate accurate measurements and approximations of the size, velocity, and angle of impacting micrometeoroids and orbital debris (MMOD). Two thin layers of kapton sheets with resistive traces are used to detect the changes in resistance that are directly proportional to the impacting force caused by the fast traveling particles. Four polyvinylidene fluoride-based sensors are positioned in the back of each kapton sheet to measure acoustic strain caused by an impact. The electronic hardware module that controls all operations employs a low-power, modular, and compact design that enables it to be installed as a low-resource load on a host satellite. Laboratory results demonstrate that in addition to having the ability to detect an impact event, the DRAGONS system can determine impact location, speed, and angle of impact with a mean error of 1.4 cm, 0.2 km/s, and 5{\deg}. The DRAGONS system could be deployed as an add-on subsystem of a payload to enable a real-time, in-depth study of the properties of MMOD.

Aeroacoustics of Darrieus Wind Turbine

The objective of this paper is to validate two different numerical methods for noise prediction of the H-Darrieus wind turbine using a complementary approach consisting of experimental measurements and numerical simulations. The acoustic measurements of a model scale rotor were performed in an anechoic wind tunnel. This data is the basis for the validation of the computational aeroacoustic simulations. Thereby, we have applied two different numerical schemes for noise prediction using hybrid methods. As usual in hybrid aeroacoustic approaches, flow field and acoustic calculations are carried out in separate software packages. For both schemes the time-dependent turbulent flow field is solved with Scale-Adaptive Simulation. The two schemes then differ in how the location of the acoustic sources and their propagation is calculated. In the first scheme the acoustic source terms are computed according to Lighthill's acoustic analogy which gives source terms located on the original CFD grid. These source terms are projected onto a coarser acoustic grid on which Lighthill's inhomogenous wave equation is solved by the Finite Element (FE) method. The second scheme uses the Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings (FW-H) method which is based on a free field Green's function. The scheme uses a porous integration surface and implements an advanced time formulation. Both methodologies are compared with experimental data.

Comparison of Radio-Telemetric Home-Range Analysis and Acoustic Detection for Little Brown Bat Habitat Evaluation

With dramatic declines of bat populations due to mortality caused by Pseudogymnoascus destructans (White-nose Syndrome), assessing habitat preferences of bats in the northeastern US is now critical to guide the development of regional conservation efforts. In the summer of 2012, we conducted fixed-station simultaneous telemetry to determine nocturnal spatial use and fixed-kernel home-range estimates of available habitat of a Myotis lucifugus (Le Conte) (Little Brown Bat) maternity colony in an artificial bat house. In summers of 2011 and 2012, we also deployed a 52-ha grid of 4 × 4 Anabat acoustic detectors over five 6–8-day sampling periods in various riparian and non-riparian environments in close proximity to the same bat house. The mean telemetry home range of 143 ha for bats (n = 7) completely overlapped the acoustic grid. Rankings of habitats from telemetry data for these 7 bats and 5 additional bats not included in home-range calculations but added for habitat-use measures (n = 13) revealed a higher proportional use of forested riparian habitats than other types at the landscape scale. Pair-wise comparisons of habitats indicated that bats were found significantly closer to forested riparian habitats and forests than to open water, developed areas, fields, shrublands, or wetland habitats at the landscape scale. Acoustic sampling showed that naive occupancy was 0.8 and 0.6 and mean nightly detection probabilities were 0.23 and 0.08 at riparian and non-riparian sites, respectively. Our findings suggest that Little Brown Bats select forested riparian and forested habitats for foraging at the landscape scale but may be most easily detected acoustically at riparian sites when a simple occupancy determination for an area is required.

Numerical simulation of flow‐induced noise using LES/SAS and Lighthill's acoustic analogy

AbstractWe present a finite element (FE) formulation of Lighthill's acoustic analogy for the hybrid computation of noise generated by turbulent flows. In the present approach, the flow field is computed using large eddy simulation and scale adaptive simulation turbulence models. The acoustic propagation is obtained by solving the variational formulation of Lighthill's acoustic analogy with the FE method. In order to preserve the acoustic energy, we compute the inhomogeneous part of Lighthill's wave equation by applying the FE formulation on the fine flow grid. The resulting acoustic nodal loads are then conservatively interpolated to the coarser acoustic grid. Subsequently, the radiated acoustic field can be solved in both time and frequency domains. In the latter case, an enhanced perfectly matched layer technique is employed, allowing one to truncate the computational domain in the acoustic near field, without compromising the numerical solution. Our hybrid approach is validated by comparing the numerical results of the acoustic field induced by a corotating vortex pair with the corresponding analytical solution. To demonstrate the applicability of our scheme, we present full 3D numerical results for the computed acoustic field generated by the turbulent flow around square cylinder geometries. The sound pressure levels obtained compare well with measured values. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Aeroacoustic study of a forward facing step using linearized Euler equations

We present a hybrid approach for computational aeroacoustics in the time domain. The flow field is computed using large eddy simulation and coupled to the acoustic propagation solver based on linearized Euler equations. Coupling in the time domain avoids storage of large flow field volume data, avoiding the slow hard disk access rate and hence speeding up the computation. Acoustic sources are calculated on the fine fluid grid and interpolated conservatively onto the coarse acoustic grid. The problem studied is flow-induced noise from flow over a forward facing step and the Reynolds number based on the height of the step ( H = 12 mm ) is Re H ≈ 8000 . The sound pressure levels obtained compare well with the published results.

하이브리드기법을 이용한 저마하수 난류소음의 효율적 전산해석

A hybrid method is presented for efficient computation of turbulent flow noise at low Mach numbers. In this method, the turbulent flow field is computed by incompressible large eddy simulation (LES), while the acoustic field is computed with the linearized perturbed compressible equations (LPCE) derived in this study. Since LPCE is computed on the rather coarse acoustic grid with the flow variables and source term obtained by the incompressible LES, the computational efficiency of calculation is greatly enhanced. Furthermore, LPCE suppress the instability of perturbed vortical mode and therefore secure consistent and stable acoustic solutions. The proposed LES/LPCE hybrid method is applied to three low Mach number turbulent flow noise problems: i) circular cylinder, ii) isolated flat plate, and iii) interaction between cylinder wake and airfoil. The computed results are closely compared with the experimental measurements.

Computing spatial derivatives for medical diagnostic imaging methods and systems

Spatial derivatives are computed. In one method, gradients are determined from data in an acoustic domain rather than a Cartesian or display coordinate domain. The gradients determined from data in the acoustic domain are then transformed to the Cartesian coordinate or display screen domain. For example, a matrix function representing the spatial relationship between the acoustic domain and the Cartesian coordinate domain transforms the coordinates. As a result, spatial gradients in the Cartesian system are provided where acoustic domain data is being processed. In another method for volume rendering or three-dimensional imaging, a gradient is calculated from data in the display or screen domain. Data from a reconstructed 3D Cartesian coordinate grid or data in an acoustic domain is resampled to ray lines. The ray lines correspond to the display domain as compared to an arbitrary Cartesian coordinate format. The gradients are calculated from the resampled data in the screen domain. When resampling on data in an acoustic domain, gradient computation prior to the resampling may require transformation as discussed above. To avoid the transformation, the gradients are determined after resampling. By calculating the gradients after resampling, interpolation of gradient information as part of the resampling is avoided or minimized. The gradient calculation is then performed using data in the display coordinate space (i.e., screen domain) without requiring further random memory accesses. In yet another method, the number of computation and interpolations for gradient calculation is reduced by performing shading prior to resampling along ray lines to the screen domain. The gradients are calculated and the voxel data in the acoustic or 3D grid Cartesian coordinate formats are altered or weighted as a function of the shading. The shaded data is then resampled to the ray lines. For example, the shading values are computed from data in an acoustic domain and applied to the data in the acoustic domain. The data is then ray cast or interpolated to ray lines without prior scan conversion.

Iso-deviant 2D gridding with efficient adaptive gridder for littoral environments (EAGLE)

Transmission loss (TL) computations in littoral areas require a dense spatial and azimuthal grid to achieve acceptable accuracy and detail. The computational cost of accurate predictions led to a new concept, OGRES (Objective Grid/Radials using Environmentally-sensitive Selection), which produces sparse, irregular acoustic grids, with controlled accuracy. Recent work to further increase accuracy and efficiency with better metrics and interpolation led to EAGLE (Efficient Adaptive Gridder for Littoral Environments). On each iteration, EAGLE produces grids with approximately constant spatial uncertainty (hence, iso-deviance), yielding predictions with ever-increasing resolution and accuracy. The EAGLE point-selection mechanism is tested using the predictive error metric and 2D synthetic data sets created from combinations of simple signal functions (e.g., polynomials, sines, cosines, exponentials), along with white and chromatic noise. The speed, efficiency, fidelity, and iso-deviance of EAGLE are determined for each combination of signal, noise, and interpolator. The results show significant efficiency enhancements compared to uniform grids of the same accuracy. [Work sponsored by NAVAIR.]

Perturbed Compressible Equations for Aeroacoustic Noise Prediction at Low Mach Numbers

A revised formulation of a hydrodynamic/acoustic splitting method is proposed for aeroacoustic noise prediction of wall-bounded shear flows at low Mach numbers. Based on the analysis of perturbed vorticity transport equation, a set of perturbed compressible equations (PCE) is derived to handle properly the near-field compressibility effects. The accuracy of the formulation is verified for a dipole tone of laminar flow past a circular cylinder at freestream Mach number M∞ = 0.3 and Reynolds number based on the cylinder diameter, Re D = 200. It is shown that the computational results of PCE are in excellent agreement with those of direct acoustic numerical simulation (DNS) and Curle's acoustic analogy. Finally, the computational efficiency of the present PCE is demonstrated by employing an acoustic grid coarser than the hydrodynamic grid such that a time step can be shared for both. It is found that PCE is about three times faster than DNS for the present cylinder tone problem and this speed-up can be increased up to 5-7 for Mach numbers less than 0.2.

An iso-deviant approach for acoustic computations using efficient adaptive gridder for littoral environments

Transmission Loss (TL) computations in littoral areas require a dense spatial and azimuthal grid to achieve acceptable accuracy and detail. The computational cost of accurate predictions led to a new concept, OGRES (Objective Grid/Radials using Environmentally-sensitive Selection), which produces sparse, irregular acoustic grids, with controlled accuracy. Recent work to further increase accuracy and efficiency with better metrics and interpolation led to EAGLE (Efficient Adaptive Gridder for Littoral Environments). On each iteration, EAGLE produces grids with approximately constant spatial uncertainty (hence, iso-deviance), yielding predictions with ever-increasing resolution and accuracy. The EAGLE point-selection mechanism is tested using the predictive error metric and 1-D synthetic data-sets created from combinations of simple signal functions (e.g., polynomials, sines, cosines, exponentials), along with white and chromatic noise. The speed, efficiency, fidelity, and iso-deviance of EAGLE are determined for each combination of signal, noise, and interpolator. The results show significant efficiency enhancements compared to uniform grids of the same accuracy. [Work sponsored by ONR under the LADC project.]

Volume rendering in the acoustic grid methods and systems for ultrasound diagnostic imaging

Methods and systems for volume rendering three-dimensional ultrasound data sets in an acoustic grid using a graphics processing unit are provided. For example, commercially available graphic accelerators cards using 3D texturing may provide 256×, 256×128 8 bit volumes at 25 volumes per second or better for generating a display of 512×512 pixels using ultrasound data. By rendering from data at least in part in an acoustic grid, the amount of scan conversion processing is reduced or eliminated prior to the rendering.