Three-dimensional analysis of vane sweep effects on fan interaction noise

The lifting surface method is an efficient solution for fully three-dimensional aerodynamic response of an annular cascade to the unsteady disturbances. Based on this response function, a prediction model for fan tonal and broadband interaction noise has been established. Three dimensional effects, including primarily the annular geometry and the radial non-uniformity of the upwash, can be fully taken into account. In this paper, a thorough analysis of vanes sweep effects is carried out by particularly considering the great dependence of the annular cascade aerodynamic response and modal acoustic field upon the radial phase profiles of incident disturbances. For fan tonal noise, different control behaviors of the forward and backward swept vanes are observed when the radial non-uniformity in the incident gust is introduced. The argument suggests that sweep should be selected so as to increase the wake intersections per vane, until it is larger than the number of cut-on radial acoustic modes. For fan broadband noise, the backward sweep succeeds in reducing the sound power level for a wide range of frequencies. Due to the statistical average effect, the efficiency relies much on the shape of the turbulence spectrum. And the sweep angle should be large enough to guarantee a preferable reduction to the fan broadband noise.