Turbulence radiating from aircraft engines and wind turbines churns the air into chaotic swirls that generate noise, but exactly how those swirls produce sound remains poorly understood. This matters because noise is the second largest environmental cause of health problems in Europe, after air pollution. Current noise-reduction strategies focus on controlling the flow's shape and speed—its kinematics—but ignore the deeper nonlinear dynamics that actually generate the sound. Without understanding those dynamics, engineers have been working partly in the dark. If this project succeeds, it will produce a low-dimensional mathematical model that captures the essential nonlinear mechanisms of noise generation. Rolls-Royce will use that model to guide low-noise design optimisation for aircraft engines, potentially reducing community noise around airports. The same insights could quiet land vehicles and wind turbines, improving living environments across society. The UK aerospace sector, which could contribute roughly £114 billion to the economy over the next 20 years, would also gain a competitive edge in quieter engine technology. This is primarily fundamental science—a dynamical-systems approach to aeroacoustics—but it has a direct industrial pathway through the collaboration with Rolls-Royce.
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According to World Health Organisation (WHO) findings, noise is the second largest environmental cause of health problems in Europe, just after the impact of air pollution. With regards to this, noise generated by unsteady turbulent flows is one of the key contributors, including noise emitted from transport vehicles and wind turbines. Despite the recognised impact of aerodynamic noise, there is a lack of clear understanding regarding the specific dynamical processes through which turbulence radiates noise. This lack of understanding has hindered efforts to efficiently reduce noise generated by turbulence. With the advancements in computational power and numerical methods, high-fidelity flow simulations become more affordable to generate high-quality flow datasets and offer unprecedented opportunities to examine the noise generation process in great detail. In light of this, the aim of this project is to leverage high-fidelity simulations with modern data-driven approaches to unravel the nonlinear dynamics of noise generation by turbulent flows. To this end, this project will (a) characterise the nonlinear dynamics involved in noise generation from a dynamical system perspective in the frame of high-fidelity simulations and (b) understand the nonlinear mechanisms that underpin the noise-generating dynamics with a low-dimensional dynamical model derived from simulation data. The project will advance our fundamental understanding of the dynamics of noise sources generated by turbulence, leading to a new paradigm of noise reduction strategies for controlling turbulence dynamics on top of the kinematics. In collaboration with Rolls-Royce, the project will have a direct impact on aircraft engine noise reduction by offering a powerful toolset to develop a physical understanding of jet noise sources on the current designs and provide guidance on low-noise design optimisation. This will contribute to the growth of air transport without detrimental impact on community noise and help to maintain the UK aerospace’s leadership in developing new technology with a potential contribution of around £114 billion to the UK economy over the next 20 years. Since turbulence-generated noise is central in most aeroacoustics applications, the project is expected to produce a broad impact on noise reduction for land vehicles and wind turbines, which will benefit the whole society by creating a better living environment.
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