Prediciton of the flow and acoustic fields generated by an isolated propeller

da Silva, F. D. TEG-Thermodfluids Engineering Group, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Joinville, SC, Brazil, filipe.dutra@teg.ufsc.br

Batista, P. A. TEG-Thermodfluids Engineering Group, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Joinville, SC, Brazil

Xavier, G. H. TEG-Thermodfluids Engineering Group, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Joinville, SC, Brazil

Chadlvski, J. V. V. M. TEG-Thermodfluids Engineering Group, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Joinville, SC, Brazil

Abstract

Propeller-driven aircraft noise has been a problem to passengers and community for decades. With the recent advances and focus on the development of electric propulsion and unmanned aerial vehicles, the noise emitted by propellers is still a concern. The design of low-noise propellers requires a balance between noise emission and aerodynamic performance, which commonly walk in different ways during design. Numerical approaches such computational fluid dynamics (CFD) coupled with noise prediction methods can aid in the design of propellers and in their installation effects. Analytical, semi-empirical or reduced order methods are desired for the design process as their use make possible the analyses of multiple configurations and optimization processes. We propose an analysis and validation of a simulation model for predicting the flow field and aerodynamic characteristics of propellers using the opensource code OpenFOAM. A 4-blade tractor propeller geometry of diameter D = 0.237 m was chosen from the literature. Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes simulations were conducted using the SST turbulence model. A dynamic mesh approach was adopted to simulate the rotation of the propeller, in which the domain is divided in a static region and a rotating region. Results are validated through comparisons with reference data. The acoustic field is obtained by different approaches: acoustic analogies and semi-analytical methods, and the results are compared to other numerical data in the literature. In the first approach the tonal noise field is obtained from the simulated flow field using the Ffowcs-Williams and Hawkings analogy. In the second approach, the distributed thrust and torque coefficients, obtained via CFD, are used as input to analytical methods for the prediction of the thickness and loading components of propeller noise. Results of both approaches are compared and discussed.

Keywords:

Propeller Noise

OpenFOAM

Semi-analytical Methods.

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