Mitigation of whistling in vertical corrugated pipes by liquid addition

Abstract

When a corrugated pipe is subject to a dry gas flow, high amplitude sound can be produced (so-called ‘whistling’). It was shown previously that liquid addition to corrugated pipe flow has the ability to reduce sound production. Small amounts of liquid are sufficient to mitigate whistling entirely. One of the mitigation mechanisms, cavity filling, is studied experimentally. Acoustic measurements are combined with a planar laser-induced fluorescence technique to measure the liquid accumulation in the cavities of a corrugated pipe. Using this technique, it is shown that the amount of filling of the cavities with liquid increases with increasing liquid injection rate and with reducing gas flow rate. The reduction in whistling amplitude caused by the liquid injection is closely related to the cavity filling. This indicates that the geometric alteration of the pipe wall, caused by the accumulation of liquid inside the cavities, is an important factor in the reduction in whistling amplitude.