QUIET AEROFOILS OF THE NEXT GENERATION

众所周知，风力涡轮机和飞机是噪音很大的机器，这限制了居住在其运行场所附近的人们的接受度，例如风力发电场和机场。当然，这种限制对航空航天和可再生能源部门的增长有着重大影响，这对整个英国经济至关重要。风力涡轮机和飞机都有共同的噪声产生机制，即翼型叶片和机翼之间的相互作用与周围的湍流。传统的翼型有直的领先和后缘，根据最近的研究，这一建议的作者，是噪音最大的几何配置。在翼型噪声显著降噪已获得引入锯齿（或波动）进入后缘和前缘几何形状。在单独的研究中，引入细纹到翼型表面（非常细的凹槽）也已被证明产生显著减少阻力。这是合理的假设，翼型阻力和它的噪声辐射连接，虽然这从未被正式调查。调查这种联系是这项工作的目标之一。该项目将寻求将这三种技术结合到一个单一的翼型设计中，同时减少前缘和后缘噪音，同时保持空气动力学性能。这个优化过程将需要对它们各自的降噪机制有一个基本的了解，以确保它们的综合效益至少是相加的，或者可能比它们各自的效益总和更有效。这项工作的成果是新一代的机翼，噪音控制是其设计的核心。”

Wind turbines and aircraft are well known to be noisy machines that limits their acceptability to people living close to their operation, such as wind farms and airports. This limitation of course has significant implications for the growth of the aerospace and renewable energy sectors, which is vital to the UK economy as a whole. Wind turbines and aircraft have common noise generation mechanisms, namely the interaction between the airfoil blades and wings with turbulent flow around it. Conventional airfoils have straight leading and trailing edges, which according to recent research by the authors of this proposal, is the noisiest geometrical configuration. Significant noise reductions in airfoil noise have been obtained by introducing serrations (or undulations) into the trailing edge and leading edge geometries. In separate studies, introducing riblets onto the airfoil surface (very fine grooves) have also been shown to produce significant reductions in drag. It is reasonable to assume that airfoil drag and its noise radiation are connected, although this has never been formally investigated. An investigation into this association is one of the objectives of this work.This project will seek to combine these three technologies into a single airfoil design for the simultaneous reduction of leading edge and trailing edge noise whilst preserving aerodynamic performance. This optimisation process will necessitate a fundamental understanding into their noise reductions mechanisms individually in order to ensure that their combined benefits are at least additive or may combine to be more effective than the sum of their benefits individually. The outcome of this work is a new generation of aerofoils with noise control at the heart of their design."