Wind turbine noise auralization including tonal and broadband aeroacoustic sources

Abstract

The annoyance reported by people living in the vicinity of wind farms may be due to the nature of the noise, which includes significant low frequency components with a modulated temporal structure. To better understand this annoyance, it is desirable to develop a wind turbine noise auralization technique in order to perform psychoacoustic tests in a controlled manner. The physics-based synthesis tool presented here includes both tonal and broadband aeroacoustic sources. On the one hand, the tonal components at the harmonics of the blade passing frequencies are mostly due to the blade-tower interaction. On the other hand, the broadband components corresponding to trailing edge noise and turbulent inflow noise are obtained from Amiet's theory. In order to include long-range propagation effects in the synthesized sounds, parabolic equation calculations are performed for various source heights along the rotor height. This study emphasizes the influence of some key parameters on the wind turbine sounds, such as propagation range and direction, wind shear, turbulence dissipation rate and ground impedance.

Analysis of MAV Rotors Optimized for Low Noise and Aerodynamic Efficiency with Operational Constraints

“…These models have accurately predicted broadband noise for helicopter rotors [28,29], automotive fans [30][31][32][33] and wind turbines [34][35][36][37], which involve moderate-to-high Reynolds numbers and fully turbulent boundary layers. However, for micro air vehicles operating at lower Reynolds numbers, the boundary layer dynamics differ, being not fully turbulent, prone to laminar separation, and the formation of laminar separation bubbles [38][39][40], leading to more challenging broadband noise predictions and reducing the accuracy of these methods for smaller rotors.…”