In this work we propose replacing the conventional flat-surface airframe that shields the engine by a wavy surface. The basic principle is to design a wavy pattern to reflect the incoming near-field flow and acoustic perturbations into waves of a particular dominant frequency. The reflected waves will then excite the corresponding frequency of the large-scale structure in the initial region of the jet’s shear layer. By designing the frequency of the reflected waves to be the harmonic of the fundamental frequency that corresponds to the radiated peak noise, the two frequency-modes interact nonlinearly. With the appropriate phase difference, the harmonic dampens the fundamental as it extracts energy from it to amplify. The outcome is a reduction in the peak noise. To evaluate this concept, we conducted Detached Eddy Simulations for a rectangular supersonic jet with and without the wavy shield and verified our numerical results with experimental data for a free jet, as well as, for a jet with an adjacent flat surface. Results show that the proposed wavy surface reduces the jet noise as compared to that of the corresponding flat surface by as much as 4 dB.
Poiseuille flow over a wavy surface
