Application of an acoustic analogy to PIV data from rectangular cavity flows

The present paper describes a method to derive information about the acoustic emission of a flow using particle image velocimetry (PIV) data. The advantage of the method is that it allows studying sound sources, the related flow phenomena and their acoustic radiation into the far field, simultaneously. In a first step the time history of two-dimensional instantaneous pressure fields is derived from planar PIV data. In a successive step the Curle’s acoustic analogy is applied to the pressure data to obtain the acoustic radiation of the flow. The test cases studied here are two rectangular cavity flows at very low Mach number with different aspect ratios L/H. The main sound source is located at the cavity trailing edge and it is due to the impingement of vortices shed in the shear layer. It is shown that the flow emits sound with a main directivity in the upstream direction for the smaller aspect ratio and the directivity is more uniform for the larger aspect ratio. In the latter case the acoustic pressure spectra has a broader character due to the impact of the downstream recirculation zone onto the shear layer instabilities, destroying their regular pattern and alternating the main sound source.