Noise prediction of a subsonic turbulent round jet using the lattice-Boltzmann method

The lattice-Boltzmann method (LBM) was used to study the far-field noise generated from a Mach, M-j=0.4, unheated turbulent axisymmetric jet. A commercial code based on the LBM kernel was used to simulate the turbulent flow exhausting from a pipe which is 10 jet radii in length. Near-field flow results such as jet centerline velocity decay rates and turbulence intensities were in agreement with experimental results and results from comparable LES studies. The predicted far field sound pressure levels were within 2 dB from published experimental results. Weak unphysical tones were present at high frequency in the computed radiated sound pressure spectra. These tones are believed to be due to spurious sound wave reflections at boundaries between regions of varying voxel resolution. These "VR tones" did not appear to bias the underlying broadband noise spectrum, and they did not affect the overall levels significantly. The LBM appears to be a viable approach, comparable in accuracy to large eddy simulations, for the problem considered. The main advantages of this approach over Navier-Stokes based finite difference schemes may be a reduced computational cost, ease of including the nozzle in the computational domain, and ease of investigating nozzles with complex shapes. (C) 2010 Acoustical Society of America. [DOI: 10.1121/1.3458846]