Numerical investigations on the flow over cubes with rounded corners and the noise emitted

Abstract

The effect of corner rounding on the flow past a cube is investigated numerically at different Reynolds numbers ranging from 50,000 to 200,000 using delayed detached-eddy simulation in OpenFOAM. Different corner radii from 0 to 40% of the cube length have been considered. To validate the adopted methodology, a benchmark case on the flow over a sphere with the same characteristic length is first performed. Good agreement has been achieved between the results of the benchmark and available experimental and numerical data from literature. Subsequently, features of the flow around cubes with rounded corners are investigated, including the aerodynamic coefficients, mean flow patterns and the surface pressure distribution. The relation between flow features and the aerodynamic coefficients is also analysed. In addition, the far-field noise emitted from the rounded cube is predicted using the Ffowcs William-Hawkings acoustic analogy in FLUENT. It is found that corner rounding with carefully determined radius can be an effective way to reduce the emitted noise. The minimum noise is found for a radius 1/3 of the cube side length with the lowest surface pressure fluctuations, but the sound level increases again for a further increase in corner radius to R/L = 2/5 due to vortex shedding.

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ORCID for David Thompson: orcid.org/0000-0002-7964-5906

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