Experimental and numerical study on aerodynamic noise of outdoor unit of room air conditioner with different grilles

The aerodynamic and aeroacoustic performances of outdoor unit with two different types of grille have been investigated in present study. Experimental results indicate that the grille sharp will affect the flow rate and increase broadband noise level of outdoor unit. Based on noise generation mechanism and CFD simulation, vortex shedding noise model and inlet turbulence noise model are adopted to predict the broadband noise level of outdoor unit. When vortex shedding noise is concerned, the wake parameters should be calculated at 3 mm downstream of grille to achieve good accuracy. Inlet turbulence noise is generated from the interaction between blade wake and the grille, and plays less important role in present outdoor unit configuration. In comparison with experimental results, it is shown that the broadband noise prediction method could provide reasonable accuracy and the error between prediction and experiment is less than 1 dBA.