Investigation of downstream and sideline subsonic jet noise using Large Eddy Simulation

The sound fields radiated by Mach number 0.6 and 0.9, circular jets with Reynolds numbers varying from 1.7×103 to 4×105 are investigated using Large Eddy Simulations. As the Reynolds number decreases, the properties of the sound radiation do not change significantly in the downstream direction, whereas they are modified in the sideline direction. At low Reynolds numbers, for large angles downstream from the jet axis, the acoustic levels are indeed remarkably lower and a large high-frequency part of the sound spectra vanishes. For all Reynolds numbers, the downstream and the sideline sound spectra both appear to scale in frequency with the Strouhal number. However their peak amplitudes vary following two different velocity exponents according to the radiation direction. The present observations suggest the presence of two sound sources: a Reynolds number-dependent source, predominant for large radiation angles, connected to the randomly-developing turbulence, and a deterministic source, radiating downstream, related to a mechanism intrinsic to the jet geometry, which is still to be comprehensively described. This view agrees well with the experimental results displaying two distinguishable components in turbulent mixing noise [1, 2].