INVESTIGATION OF WALL-MODELED LARGE EDDY SIMULATIONS FOR JET AEROACOUSTICS
Creators: name: Vankayala, Shanmukeswar Rao
Publisher: name: Purdue University Graduate School
Year: 2019
Subjects: Aerospace engineering not elsewhere classified

description: In recent years, jet noise has been an active area of research due to an increase in the use of aircraft in both commercial and military applications. To meet the noise standards laid out by government agencies, novel nozzle design concepts are being developed with an aim to attenuate the noise levels. To reduce the high costs incurred by experiments, simulation techniques such as large eddy simulation (LES) in combination with a surface integral acoustic method have received much attention for investigating various nozzle concepts. LES is utilized to predict the unsteady flow in the nearfield, whereas the surface integral acoustic method is used for the computation of noise in the farfield. However, Reynolds numbers at which nozzles operate in the real world are very high making wall-resolved LES simulations prohibitively expensive. To make LES simulations affordable, wall-models are being used to model the flow in the near wall region. Using a highly scalable, sixth-order finite-difference-based, in-house LES code, both wall-resolved and wall-modeled simulations of jets through the baseline short metal chevron (SMC000) nozzle were carried out earlier using an implicit LES (ILES) approach. However, differences exist in noise levels between the two simulations. Understanding the cause and reducing the differences between the two methodologies, while at the same time improving the fidelity of the wall-modeled LES is the main aim of the present work. Three new wall-models are implemented in the in-house LES code. A generalized equilibrium wall-model (GEWM) is implemented along with two wall-models that can account for non-equilibrium effects. First, a series of preliminary SMC000 wall-modeled LES simulations were performed and analyzed using the GEWM. The effect of turbulent length scales and velocity fluctuations specified at the inflow, wall-model formulation, and wall-normal grid refinement are analyzed. The adjustment of the fluctuations levels at the inflow proves to be useful in producing flowfields similar to that of the wall-resolved simulation. The newly implemented wall-models are validated for non-canonical problems such as an accelerating boundary layer developing over a flat plate and flow through a converging-diverging channel. It is noticed that the Reynolds number should be high enough for the non-equilibrium wall-models to be effective. At low Reynolds numbers, both equilibrium and non-equilibrium models produce similar wall shear-stresses. However, the wall shear stress boundary conditions supplied by the wall-models do not affect the mean velocity, turbulent kinetic energy, and Reynolds shear stress. Since all the wall-models produce similar results, and the GEWM is the most economical among the implemented wall-models, it is used in performing two wall-modeled LES SMC000 nozzle simulations for noise predictions. The inflow velocity and density fluctuations are varied between the simulations. The first SMC000 simulation uses similar inflow conditions as the previous wall-resolved SMC000 simulation. The second wall-modeled simulation was carried out by reducing the density and velocity fluctuations added to the mean flow at the inlet by 65%. The flowfield and acoustics agree reasonably well in comparison with the wall-resolved LES and similar experiments. Lowering of the velocity and density fluctuations in the wall-model LES improves the agreement of the far-field noise predictions with the wall-resolved LES at most observer locations. However, the preliminary SMC000 simulations performed using a higher Reynolds number and Mach number than that of the previous case show that the approach of adjusting the velocity and density fluctuations added to the mean flow have minimal impact on the developing flowfield which in turn affects the farfield noise. Thus, unless a more effective wall-modeling method is developed, possibly employing an explicit SGS model, the postdictive process of using a wall-model while adjusting the velocity and density fluctuations, seems to be an affordable tool for testing various nozzle designs, subject to the Reynolds number and Mach number being used.