Fan broadband interaction noise modeling using a low-order method

A low-order method for simulating broadband interaction noise downstream of the fan stage in a turbofan engine is explored in this paper. The particular noise source of interest is due to the interaction of the fan rotor wake with the fan exit guide vanes (FEGVs). The vanes are modeled as flat plates and the method utilizes strip theory relying on unsteady aerodynamic cascade theory at each strip. This paper shows predictions for 6 of the 9 cases from NASA׳s Source Diagnostic Test (SDT) and all 4 cases from the 2014 Fan Broadband Workshop Fundamental Case 2 (FC2). The turbulence in the rotor wake is taken from hot-wire data for the low speed SDT cases and the FC2 cases. Additionally, four different computational simulations of the rotor wake flow for all of the SDT rotor speeds have been used to determine the rotor wake turbulence parameters. Comparisons between predictions based on the different inputs highlight the possibility of a potential effect present in the hot-wire data for the SDT as well as the importance of accurately describing the turbulence length scale when using this model. The method produces accurate predictions of the spectral shape for all of the cases. It also predicts reasonably well all of the trends that can be considered based on the included cases such as vane geometry, vane count, turbulence level, and rotor speed.