Leading edge blowing to mimic and enhance the serration effects for aerofoil

Abstract

Leading edge serration is now a well-established and effective passive control device for the reduction of turbulence–leading edge interaction noise, and for the suppression of boundary layer separation at high angle of attack. It is envisaged that leading edge blowing could produce the same mechanisms as those produced by a serrated leading edge to enhance the aeroacoustics and aerodynamic performances of aerofoil. Aeroacoustically, injection of mass airflow from the leading edge (against the incoming turbulent flow) can be an effective mechanism to decrease the turbulence intensity, and/or alter the stagnation point. According to classical theory on the aerofoil leading edge noise, there is a potential for the leading edge blowing to reduce the level of turbulence–leading edge interaction noise radiation. Aerodynamically, after the mixing between the injected air and the incoming flow, a shear instability is likely to be triggered owing to the different flow directions. The resulting vortical flow will then propagate along the main flow direction across the aerofoil surface. These vortical flows generated indirectly owing to the leading edge blowing could also be effective to mitigate boundary layer separation at high angle of attack. The objectives of this paper are to validate these hypotheses, and combine the serration and blowing together on the leading edge to harvest further improvement on the aeroacoustics and aerodynamic performances. Results presented in this paper strongly indicate that leading edge blowing, which is an active flow control method, can indeed mimic and even enhance the bio-inspired leading edge serration effectively.