Numerical Study of the Impact of Fluid–Structure Interaction on Flow Noise over a Rectangular Cavity

Fluid–structure interactions (FSI) can significantly affect flow and the acoustic field generated by it. In this article, simulations of the flow over a rectangular cavity are conducted with and without taking FSI into account. The aim of this research is to conduct a numerical study of the flow over a cavity and to verify whether interactions between the flow and the elastic structure can significantly affect the flow itself or the acoustic pressure field. Four cases involving flexible walls with different material parameters and one reference case with rigid walls were analysed. The two-directional fluid–structure coupling between the flow and cavity walls was simulated. The simulations were performed with the volume and finite element methods using OpenFOAM software to solve the fluid field, CalculiX software to solve the displacement of the structure, and the preCICE library to couple the codes and computed fields. The acoustic analogy of Ffowcs-Williams and Hawkings and the libAcoustics library were used to calculate the sound pressure. The simulation results showed that FSI has a significant influence on sound pressure in terms of both pressure amplitudes and levels as well as in terms of noise frequency composition. There was a significant increase in the sound pressure compared to the case with rigid walls, especially for frequencies above 1 kHz. The frequencies at which this occurred are related to the natural frequencies of the cavity walls and the Rossiter frequencies. Overlap of these frequencies may lead to an increase in noise and structural vibrations, which was observed for one of the materials used. This study may provide insight into the flow noise generation mechanism when fluid–structure interactions are taken into account. The conclusions presented here can form a basis for further work on aerodynamic noise in the presence of thin-walled structures.