Silencing corrugated pipes with liquid addition - Identification of the mechanisms behind whistling mitigation

Abstract

Severe vibrations and sound production can occur in dry gas flow through corrugated pipes. The addition of very small amounts of liquid to the dry gas flow potentially mitigates these flow-induced vibrations (FIVs) and noise. The different mechanisms behind this whistling mitigation are studied in this work, where acoustic measurements are combined with flow visualization and droplet sizing. Different corrugation geometries are studied. It is shown that noise mitigation mainly occurs through a geometric alteration of the cavity mouth, resulting in a reduced acoustic source strength. Additional acoustic damping as a consequence of the presence of droplets has a very limited contribution to the mitigation of FIVs. A non-axisymmetric filling of the cavities of a corrugated pipe with liquid is more effective in reducing the acoustic output, compared to an axisymmetric filling. The liquid viscosity has a minor effect on the achieved noise mitigation. To predict the acoustic source strength for a particular cavity geometry a numerical method is developed, based on URANS simulations combined with Howe's energy corollary. An energy balance method is applied to obtain the acoustic source strength from experiments. The whistling frequencies are accurately predicted with the simulations, but the acoustic source strength is over-predicted by a factor 2. Trends in the source strength obtained from simulations, however, closely resemble the experimentally obtained results. The developed method provides an intuitive understanding of sound production by vortical flow structures and shows potential for the prediction of self-sustained oscillations in corrugated pipes.