Comparison of aeroacoustic predictions of turbulent trailing edge noise using three different flow solutions

Noise generated by turbulent flow past a sharp edge is important in the design of a variety of applications such as aircraft and wind turbines. It is therefore useful to have predictive methods that can capture the effects of subtle design changes on the flow and resulting radiated noise. In this paper, such a methodology is presented and used to predict noise from a sharp-edged strut with a turbulent boundary layer. The method is unique because it combines mean flow data from a Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) solution with statistical models of the turbulence to form acoustic source terms for an analytical acoustic model. Three different CFD codes (OpenFOAM, STAR-CCM+ and Fluent) are used to carry out the flow calculations, and two of the solutions are used as input to the noise prediction model. The resulting noise predictions are critically compared against each other and also with experimental data. The differences are highlighted to illustrate the sensitivity of the acoustic predictions to the RANS solution.