On the use of time-resolved particle image velocimetry for the investigation of rod–airfoil aeroacoustics

The present study investigates an experimental methodology to determine aeroacoustic emission from vortex–structure interaction by means of Time-resolved Particle Image Velocimetry (TR-PIV). The aeroacoustic investigation is conducted on a rod–airfoil configuration at Re=6000 based on the rod diameter. The time-resolved velocity field obtained from 2D PIV is employed to evaluate the instantaneous planar pressure field by spatial integration of the Navier–Stokes equations under the assumption of 2D incompressible flow. The instantaneous pressure field computed on a control surface approximating that of the physical airfoil is used as source term of Curleʹs aeroacoustic analogy in both a distributed and a lumped formulation to obtain the far-field acoustic prediction. The spanwise coherence function of velocity and pressure fluctuations is determined by means of additional experiments, and is applied to weight the contributions at different frequencies. Results are compared with far-field microphone measurements in terms of spectra and directivity pattern. A good agreement is observed for the tonal component corresponding to the periodic interaction of the Kármán vortices with the airfoil leading edge. The contributions at higher frequencies also show an acceptable agreement when the spanwise coherence is taken into account.