Numerical investigation of geometrical parameters on the hydrodynamic noise characteristics of submerged bodies and comparisons with experiments

The effects of the geometrical parameters on the hydroacoustic characteristics of the flow over rectangular, square and circular cylinders are investigated by numerical analyses and experiments. The numerical simulations are carried out by using a hybrid method which combines RANS with FWH equation. In order to validate the numerical results, the hydroacoustic measurements are also performed for the circular cylinders. The circular cylinders with diameters of 9.5, 19.0, 38.0 and 65.0 mm and aspect ratios of 2.5, 5.0 and 10.0 are employed for the hydroacoustic measurements and analyses. The rectangular cylinders with side ratios of 0.3, 0.6, 1.8 and 3.0, and also square cylinder with the side ratio of 1.0 are considered in hydroacoustic analyses. The Reynolds numbers are in the range of 2.25 × 10⁴ and 1.7 × 10⁵. The hydroacoustic characteristics of the cylinders are obtained to be completely different due to the differences in the shear layer separation, reattachment mechanism and the intensity of disturbance. The shape of the noise spectrum significantly changes with the geometrical shapes of the cylinders. The spectrum becomes narrower by an increase in the side ratio. The main peak frequency reduces when the side ratio increases. The highest value of the maximum sound pressure level, SPL_max are observed for the square cylinder and the lowest value for the rectangular cylinder with the side ratio of 0.6. The peak spectrum becomes like a line spectrum as the cylinder diameter decreases. The main peak frequency decreases when the cylinder diameter increases but it is almost constant with the aspect ratio. At the constant Reynolds number, the broadband noise level and SPL_max decrease with an increase in the cylinder diameter and decrease in the aspect ratio. A good agreement between the numerical and experimental results are obtained.