Interaction of turbulence with the leading-edge stagnation point of a thin aerofoil

Abstract

An asymptotic model is constructed to analyse the interaction of turbulence generated far upstream with a thin elliptic-nosed solid body in uniform flow. The leading-edge stagnation point causes significant deformation of incident vorticity, and hence our analysis focuses on the region of size scaling with the nose radius close to the stagnation point. Rapid distortion theory is used to separate the flow field generated by a single unsteady gust perturbation into a convective non-acoustic part, containing the evolution of the upstream vortical disturbance, and an acoustic part generated by the interaction of the vorticity with the solid surface, as is typical in gust-aerofoil interaction theory. Using single-frequency gust response solutions, along with a von Karman energy spectrum, we find the turbulent pressure spectrum generated by homogeneous isotropic turbulence incident from far upstream. Both high- and low-frequency gusts are considered to allow approximations to be found for the turbulent pressure spectra close to the leading edge, and far from the body close to the incident stagnation streamline. Good agreement is shown between the asymptotic results for the near- and far-field leading-edge turbulent pressure spectra and recent experimental findings.