Broadband Noise Reduction With Trailing Edge Brushes

Airfoil broadband trailing edge noise is reduced by modification of the trailing edge geometry. A brush made of a single row of flexible polypropylene fibers is integrated in the trailing edge of a cambered airfoil. Far field acoustic measurements show a noise reduction potential reaching 3 dB on a wide frequency range. Due to high curvature of the incident flow, a secondary acoustic source partly masks the trailing edge noise reduction. Hot wire correlation measurements in the very near wake of the airfoil show that longitudinal as well as transversal length scales are affected by the brush. Span wise coherence length of boundary layer eddies falls off by 25 % in the presence of a brush in the adequate frequency range, possibly explaining a 1.3 dB contribution to the noise reduction mechanism. Boundary layer turbulence exhibits a preferred coherence length l y v on a wide frequency range. l y v /d ≈ 2, is considered a proper brush design law, d being the diameter of the brush.