ACAT1 Benchmark of RANS-Informed Analytical Methods for Fan Broadband Noise Prediction: Part II—Influence of the Acoustic Models

Abstract

A benchmark dedicated to RANS-informed analytical methods for the prediction of turbofan rotor–stator interaction broadband noise was organised within the framework of the European project TurboNoiseBB. The second part of this benchmark focuses on the impact of the acoustic models. Twelve different approaches implemented in seven different acoustic solvers are compared. Some of the methods resort to the acoustic analogy, while some use a direct approach bypassing the calculation of a source term. Due to differing application objectives, the studied methods vary in terms of complexity to represent the turbulence, to calculate the acoustic response of the stator and to model the boundary and flow conditions for the generation and propagation of the acoustic waves. This diversity of approaches constitutes the unique quality of this work. The overall agreement of the predicted sound power spectra is satisfactory. While the comparison between the models show significant deviations at low frequency, the power levels vary within an interval of ±3 dB at mid and high frequencies. The trends predicted by increasing the rotor speed are similar for almost all models. However, most predicted levels are some decibels lower than the experimental results. This comparison is not completely fair—particularly at low frequency—because of the presence of noise sources in the experimental results, which were not considered in the simulations.