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Reduction of Trailing-Edge Noise by Means of Brush-Serrated Coupling

Bionic Structure
To cite this article: Yong Wang et al 2019 IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng. 538 012053

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ICMMME2019 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 538 (2019) 012053 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/538/1/012053

Reduction of Trailing-Edge Noise by Means of Brush-

Serrated Coupling Bionic Structure

Yong Wanga, Yu Zhao, Hao Tian, Kun Zhao and Yu-Bao Song
Key Laboratory of Aerodynamic Noise Control, China Aerodynamics Research and
Development Center, Mianyang 621000, China

a
Corresponding author: nudt604@aliyun.com

Abstract. Bio-inspired noise reduction based on the silent flight characteristics of the owl is an
effective passive aerodynamic noise control method. Inspired by the silent flight of owls, this
paper investigates trailing edge noise control of the NACA 0012 airfoil by using a brush-
serrated coupling bionic structure at chord based Reynolds numbers ranging from Rec=6×105 to
Rec=1.2×106. Preliminary experimental results showed that the proposed brush-serrated
coupling bionic structure can not only avoid low-frequency vortex shedding tonal noise caused
by single serrated trailing edges, but also reduce noise emission in a wider frequency range,
which can be widely used in aerodynamic noise control.

1. Introduction
In the past few decades, bio-inspired aerodynamic noise control technique has attracted an increasing
attention. It was originally inspired by three distinctive characteristics of the silent flying owls [1] (i.e.,
leading edge comb-like serrations, trailing edge fringes and velvet-like downy upper surface of wings
and legs) and could be roughly classified into four main solutions: leading edge serrations [2-4],
trailing edge serrations [5-12], fringe-type extensions (brushes or slits) [13-15], and porous material
inspired noise reduction [16-20].
Though a large number of numerical and experimental studies have demonstrated that bio-inspired
noise control technique can reduce medium frequency noise, several extra noise (e.g. increase in high-
frequency or low-frequency tonal noise) was often observed, which may lead to a large penalty to the
overall noise reduction [5, 6, 8, 17, 18]. Therefore, how to improve the design of existing bio-inspired
devices to get better noise reduction goals is an interesting direction. In addition, existing bio-inspired
devices learned only one of the three special noise reduction adaptations of the owl wings, how to
combine or couple them together is still a meaningful direction. These two efforts motivate the
experimental study presented in this paper, which coupled trailing edge serrations with brushes to
reduce noise radiation. It is shown from the preliminary experimental results that the proposed
coupling structure could suppress both high-frequency noise increase and extraneous low-frequency
tonal noise caused by single trailing edge serrations.

2. Experimental Setup and Data Processing

All experimental tests were conducted in the 0.55 m × 0.4 m aeroacoustic wind tunnel at China
Aerodynamics Research and Development Center (CARDC). The open test section of this wind tunnel,
with dimension of 0.55 m (width) × 0.4 m (height) × 1.4 m (length), is surrounded by a 5.5 m × 3.7 m

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IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 538 (2019) 012053 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/538/1/012053

× 4 m anechoic chamber. The walls of the anechoic chamber are acoustically treated with glass wool
wedges, leading to a background noise of less than 76 dB(A) (measured at 80 m/s, 2 m away from the
nozzle centerline) and cut-off frequency of 100 Hz. This wind tunnel can achieve a freestream
turbulence intensity of about 0.2% and flow speeds of 8-100 m/s.
The experimental model under investigation is a symmetric 2D NACA 0012 airfoil, with chord length
of c=300 mm and spanwise length of L=398 mm. As shown in Figure 1, the airfoil model is composed
of a main steel body and three trailing edges: one with a straight, unserrated configuration (denoted as
‘baseline’) and two with directly cutting serrations. These cutting serrations offer better structural
strength and integrity [7, 10-12], both of which have the same root-to-peak amplitude of H=30 mm.
Two different serration wavelengths are compared in this study: one with λ=12 mm (termed as
λ12H30 or wide serrations) and the other with λ=6 mm (termed as λ6H30 or narrow serrations).

Figure 1. Illustrations of the NACA 0012 airfoil with three trailing edges (right to left: baseline, wide
serrations and narrow serrations).
The proposed brush-serrated coupling bionic structure was achieved by inserting brushes into the
trailing edge serrations, and thus a slot of 0.5 mm in thickness was made in the downstream face of the
cutting serrations. As can be seen in Figure 2, the inserted brushes are a set of soft silicone rubbers.

Figure 2. Photograph of the tested brushes, separated (top) or coupled into the serrations (down).
Far-field noise measurements were made using a single G.R.A.S 46AE microphone, situated at a
distance of 1.5 m from the airfoil trailing edge and mid-span. A detail sketch of the experimental setup
is illustrated in Figure 3.

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ICMMME2019 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 538 (2019) 012053 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/538/1/012053

Figure 3. Sketch of the experimental setup (not in scale).

Noise data were acquired at a sampling frequency of 51.2 kHz and sampling time of 30 s. 1/3-octave
Sound Pressure Level (SPL) was computed with hanning window function and a window size of 4,096
data points. Acoustic data were recorded at angle of attack α=0°and four mean flow speeds of V∞=30,
40, 50 and 60 m/s, corresponding to the chord-based Reynolds numbers ranged from Rec=6×105 to
Rec=1.2×106.

3. Experimental Results

3.1. Analysis of the Baseline Case

This section presents the baseline results, corresponding to the case when the main body of the NACA
0012 airfoil is equipped with the straight, unserrated trailing edge. The SPL plot of this case under
different flow speeds is shown in Figure 4. From this figure, we can see that the NACA 0012 airfoil
generates broadband self-noise at the investigated flow speeds or Reynolds numbers, and the noise
generally increases with increasing flow speeds.

Figure 4. Acoustic spectra of the baseline NACA 0012 airfoil under different flow speeds.

3.2. Analysis of the Single Trailing Edge Serrations

Figure 5 shows the noise results produced by the two single serrated trailing edges under flow speeds
of V∞=30 m/s to V∞=60 m/s, respectively. Several interesting observations can be seen from this figure:
1). Trailing edge serrations can reduce broadband noise at mid frequencies and the level of noise
reduction decrease with the increasing of flow speeds. 2). Trailing edge serrations increase noise at

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ICMMME2019 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 538 (2019) 012053 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/538/1/012053

high frequencies, similar as several previous observations [5, 6, 8]. 3). Single trailing edge serrations
produce extraneous low-frequency narrow-band tonal noise (typically 10-25 dB above the baseline,
similar as observations in [7, 10-12]), which seriously penalize the overall noise reduction. Moreover,
low-frequency tonal noise increases with flow speed, while decreases with increasing wavelength of
the serrations λ. To assess the source of the tonal noise, the difference of SPL between the trailing
edge serrations and the baseline trailing edge △ SPL are plotted in Figure 6 as a function of Strouhal
number Stε=fε/V∞, based on the bluntness ε=8.5 mm of the trailing edge serrations at the root region.
The positive value of △ SPL represents noise increase, while negative value represents noise reduction.
From this figure, we can see that the spectral hump collapses into nearly constant Stε values under
different flow speeds. Therefore, there is strong evidence that the tonal noise is generated from the
vortex roll-up and shedding within each sawtooth gap of the serrations. 4). Wide serrations slightly
outperforms narrow serrations, since the former has similar broadband noise reduce at mid frequencies
while less noise increase at low frequencies and high frequencies.

(a) V∞=30 m/s (b) V∞=40 m/s

(c) V∞=50 m/s (d) V∞=60 m/s

Figure 5. The comparisons of noise spectra between baseline trailing edge and single serrated trailing
edges under different flow speeds.

3.3. Analysis of the Brush-Serrated Coupling Bionic Structure

Figure 7 shows the noise reduction of trailing edge sawtooth serrations coupled with brushes when
used onto the wide serrations and narrow serrations, respectively. These experimental results reveal
several interesting points: 1). Sawtooth serrations coupled with brushes maintain similar broadband
noise reductions as the single trailing edge serrations at mid frequencies. 2). The brush-serrated
coupling structure can also suppress noise increase at high frequencies. 3). The coupling structure can

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ICMMME2019 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 538 (2019) 012053 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/538/1/012053

significantly suppress the amplitude and frequency of the narrow-band tonal noise components
originating from the sawtooth gaps of the serrated trailing edges. The reason may be due to the fact
that the coupled or inserted brushes inhibit the growth of the periodic oscillatory flow and vortical
structures between each sawtooth gap and at the near wake. 4). Different to the case of single trailing
edge serrations, narrow serrations when coupled with brushes obtain slightly better performance.

(a) wide serrations (b) narrow serrations

Figure 6. △SPL as a function of Strouhal number Stε.

(a) wide serrations (b) narrow serrations

Figure 7. △SPL as a function of Strouhal number Stε for the brush-serrated coupling bionic structure
when used onto the different serrations.

4. Conclusions
In this paper, the preliminary results of an experimental study on noise reduction by using trailing
edge serrations coupled with brushes have been described. Experimental results demonstrated that the
proposed brush-serrated coupling structure could give better noise reduction, which not only obtain
slightly wider broadband noise reduction, but also suppress extraneous increase of both high-
frequency noise and low-frequency tonal noise. In the future, parameter influence of the brushes in
detail, as well as the aerodynamic effects and underlying noise reduction mechanism will be further
studied.

Acknowledgments
This work was sponsored by the National Science Foundation of China, under the grant number of
11602290.

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ICMMME2019 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 538 (2019) 012053 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/538/1/012053

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