Broadband Models: Noise from a Cylinder (Preparation)

This tutorial demonstrates how to set up aeroacoustics problems in Simcenter STAR-CCM+. The flow around a cylinder is used in the simulation to describe the required steps.

The simulation in this tutorial is an example of an application where the flow past a bluff body causes the shedding of unsteady vortices. The Reynolds number in this tutorial, 6.38E4, is in the subcritical range 300 < Re < 1.5E5. This indicates that the vortex shedding will be strong and periodic, exhibiting the familiar Karman vortex street. The onset of this phenomenon is inherently unpredictable.

The geometry is shown below.

The geometry consists of a cylinder, 20 mm in diameter, placed at the center of a three-dimensional circular computational domain, 0.6 m in diameter. The free-stream air velocity and temperature are set to be 50 m/s and 300K, respectively, corresponding to a Mach number of 0.144 (50.0/347.2) and a Reynolds number of 6.38E4 (1.184*50*0.02/1.85563E-5).

According to the recommended procedure, you first run in steady state to:

  • Use the broadband models to understand where the aeroacoustics sources are located and to indicate where the mesh needs refining.
  • Use the Mesh Frequency Cutoff estimator to prescribe the absolute cell size in the source region to satisfy frequency resolution requirements in transient flow.

Then, you activate an LES-based turbulence model in transient mode to capture the aeroacoustics sources directly and to:

  • Use the post-processing tools to perform spectral analysis.
  • Export the CFD fields for far-field noise propagation (suitable for non-compact sources).