Experimental Study on the Turbomachinery Trailing Edge Noise Reduction

This paper is a continuation of a series of study on the mechanism of the broadband noise reduction for turbomachinery blade using trailing edge serrations. The noise reduction potential of turbine blade with trailing edge serrations is experimentally assessed as well as the various parameters on the noise reduction effect. Special focus is put on whether the trailing edge serrations affect turbine cascade tailing edge noise in the same way as they do on the isolated airfoil. Five different trailing edge serrations were designed for a turbine linear cascade to investigate the effects of serration geometry parameter on the noise reduction. A linear microphone array was used to quantify the difference of sound source levels of turbine cascade with and without trailing edge modifications. The experiment was carried out at various velocities and the Reynolds number (based on cascade inlet velocity and chord) ranges from 1.3×10⁵ to 3.3×10⁵. The experiment results show that trailing edge serrations can reduce turbine trailing edge noise in a wide frequency range that we are interested (from 1600Hz to 10000Hz) and a maximum noise reduction of about 5dB is obtained in the mid frequency range (2000Hz to 4000Hz). The results show that the serration length has an important effect on the noise reduction effect and the longer serration in the experiment lead to more noise reduction. However, serration wavelength has only a little effect on the noise reduction although the wider trailing edge serrations tested in the experiment can achieve slightly more noise reduction. This is quite different from that for airfoils. At all the velocities tested, the cascade trailing edge noise is effectively reduced and the maximum noise reduction occurs at St=2fh/U≈1.