This paper presents the results of a detailed experimental investigation into the effectiveness of sinusoidal leading edge serrations on aerofoils for the reduction of the noise generated by the interaction with turbulent flow. A detailed parametric study is performed to investigate the sensitivity of the noise reductions to the serration amplitude and wavelength. The study is primarily performed on flat plates in an idealized turbulent flow, which we demonstrate captures the same behaviour as when identical serrations are introduced onto 3D aerofoils. The influence on the noise reduction of the turbulence integral length-scale is also studied. An optimum serration wavelength is identified whereby maximum noise reductions are obtained, corresponding to when the transverse integral length-scale is roughly one-forth the serration wavelength. This paper proves that, at the optimum serration wavelength, adjacent valley sources are excited incoherently. One of the most important findings of this paper is that, at the optimum serration wavelength, the sound power radiation from the serrated aerofoil varies inversely proportional to the Strouhal number St h = f h U , where f , h and U are frequency, serration amplitude and flow speed, respectively. A simple model is proposed to explain this behaviour. Noise reductions are observed to generally increase with increasing frequency until the frequency at which aerofoil self-noise dominates the interaction noise. Leading edge serrations are also shown to reduce trailing edge self-noise. The mechanism for this phenomenon is explored through PIV measurements. Finally, the lift and drag of the serrated aerofoil are obtained through direct measurement and compared against the straight edge baseline aerofoil. It is shown that aerodynamic performance is not substantially degraded by the introduction of the leading edge serrations on the aerofoil.

High-accuracy numerical simulations are performed to study aeroacoustic source mechanisms of wavy leading edges (WLE) on a thin aerofoil undergoing vortical disturbances. This canonical study is based on a prescribed spanwise vortex travelling downstream and creating secondary vortices as it passes through the aerofoil's leading edge. The primary aim of the study is to precisely understand the relationships between the vortexinduced velocity perturbation and the wall pressure fluctuation on the WLE geometry. It is observed that by increasing the size (amplitude) of the WLE the source strength at the peak region is reduced rapidly to a certain point and followed by a saturation stage, while at the root (trough) it remains fairly consistent regardless of the WLE size. This observation is demonstrated to be the consequence of three-dimensional vortex dynamics taking place along the WLE. One of the most profound features is that a system of horseshoe-like secondary vortices are created from the WLE peak region upon the impingement of the prescribed vortex. It is found that the horseshoe vortices produce significantly non-uniform velocity perturbation in front of the WLE leading to the disparity in the source characteristics between the peak and root. The alterations to the impinging velocity perturbation are carefully analysed and related to the wall pressure fluctuation in this study. In addition, a semi-analytic model based on Biot-Savart's law is developed to better understand and explain the role of the horseshoe vortex systems and the source mechanisms.

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Aerofoil self-noise produced by flow separation and stall is relatively little understood regarding the underlying generation mechanisms. The focus of this work is to provide an improved level of understanding particularly with regard to the dipole noise sources utilising a high-fidelity direct numerical simulation. A NACA0012 aerofoil is considered under three different flow conditions at a Reynolds number Re ∞ = 50, 000 and a Mach number M ∞ = 0.4. These include: a pre-stall condition with a laminar separation bubble (α = 5 •), near-stall (α = 10 •), and fully stalled (α = 15 •). The noise radiation in the far-field is significantly increased at low frequencies for the full-stall case for all observer directions which is consistent with previous experimental observations. The dominant source regions for each configuration are identified for low, medium and high frequencies, separately. A number of key findings are made concerning the source characteristics in full-stall case which differ considerably from the lower angle of attack cases. It is found that the location of the dominant sources changes more significantly with frequency for the full-stall case. Additionally, for medium to high frequencies the maximum acoustic source amplitude is weaker for the full-stall case, despite comparable levels observed in the far-field. This seemingly contradictory observation highlights the importance of phase variations in the wall pressure fluctuations. For the frequencies considered in this paper it is shown that the full-stall case usually produces a relatively more in-phase source distribution, resulting in a more efficient radiation despite the lower amplitude levels. The important flow structures which are responsible for the dipole sources are also identified through analysis of the pressure field at isolated frequencies. It is found that for low frequencies coherent structures in the shear layer are responsible for the scattering of the wall pressure fluctuations at the TE, which agrees with previous findings in the literature. However, at medium and high frequencies the shear layer structures are found to be relatively weak in the proximity of the TE. This indicates that the noise may be generated through other means, for example scattering of fluctuating pressure induced by vortices shed from the TE.

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