An experimental study of trailing edge noise from a pitching airfoil

In this study, the far-field noise from a pitching NACA 0012 airfoil was measured at a Reynolds number of 6.6 × 10⁴. The pitching motion was in sinusoidal functions with a mean incident angle of 0°. Cases with the pitching amplitude varying from 7.5° to 15° and frequency from 3 to 8 Hz were tested, corresponding to the reduced frequency from 0.094 to 0.25. A microphone was placed in the far-field and the particle image velocimetry technique was utilized to study the flow structures near the trailing edge. The short-time Fourier transformation results of the noise signals revealed that a high-level narrow-band noise hump occurred at a specific angle of attack in a pitching cycle. At the corresponding moment, a coherent vortex street convecting on the airfoil surface was observed, and the vortex shedding frequency was in good agreement with the central frequency of the noise hump. The occurrence of the noise humps was attributed to the laminar boundary layer separation. In one pitching period, the moment when the narrow-band noise hump occurs is independent from the pitching amplitude and it is delayed as the pitching frequency increases. Larger pitching frequency or amplitude results in lower peak level of the noise humps.