Influence of the boundary-layer thickness on the generation of tonal noise components by subsonic impinging jets

Abstract

The influence of the boundary layer (BL) thickness on the tonal noise generated by subsonic impinging jets is investigated. For that, initially laminar jets at Mach numbers $0.6$ and $0.9$ with BL thicknesses $0.05r_0$ , $0.1r_0$ and $0.2r_0$ , where $r_0$ is the pipe-nozzle radius, impinging on a plate at $6r_0$ from the nozzle, are simulated. For Mach number $0.9$ , acoustic tones due to feedback loops of axisymmetric nature between the nozzle and the plate are generated at frequencies that do not vary with the BL thickness. The two dominant tones are, however, $17$ and $26\ \mathrm {dB}$ stronger for the thickest BL compared with the thinnest one. For Mach number $0.6$ , for the thinnest BL no acoustic peaks appear, as observed in the experiments of the literature, but narrow peaks resulting from axisymmetric feedback loops emerge for thicker BLs. Therefore, low subsonic impinging jets can be resonant for specific nozzle-exit conditions. The increase in tone amplitude for Mach number $0.9$ , and the establishment of feedback loops for Mach number $0.6$ with increasing BL thickness, are found to result from two changes in the jet flow. The first change is that the shear-layer laminar–turbulent transition occurs farther downstream for a thicker BL, leading to a greater predominance of the axisymmetric aerodynamic fluctuations near the plate. The second change is that the amplification of the flow fluctuations between the nozzle and the plate at the tone frequencies is stronger for thicker BLs.