Transition, intermittency and phase interference effects in airfoil secondary tones and acoustic feedback loop

A large eddy simulation is performed to study secondary tones generated by a NACA0012 airfoil at angle of attack of \(\alpha = 3^{\circ}\) with freestream Mach number of \(M_{\infty} = 0.3\) and Reynolds number of \(Re = 5 \times 10^4\). Laminar separation bubbles are observed over the suction side and near the trailing edge, on the pressure side. Flow visualization and spectral analysis are employed to investigate vortex shedding aft of the suction side separation bubble. Vortex interaction results in merging or bursting such that coherent structures or turbulent packets are advected towards the trailing edge leading to different levels of noise emission. Despite the intermittent occurrence of laminar-turbulent transition, the noise spectrum depicts a main tone with multiple equidistant secondary tones. To understand the role of flow instabilities on the tones, the linearized Navier-Stokes equations are examined in its operator form through bi-global stability and resolvent analyses, and by time evolution of disturbances using a matrix-free method. These linear global analyses reveal amplification of disturbances over the suction side separation bubble. Non-normality of the linear operator leads to further transient amplification due to modal interaction among eigenvectors. Two-point, one time autocovariance calculations of pressure along the spanwise direction elucidate aspects of the acoustic feedback loop mechanism in the non-linear solutions. This feedback process is self-sustained by acoustic waves radiated from the trailing edge, which reach the most sensitive flow location between the leading edge and the separation bubble, as identified by the resolvent analysis. Leading edge disturbances arising from secondary diffraction and phase interference among the most unstable frequencies computed in the eigenspectrum are also shown to have an important role in the feedback loop.