Aerofoil-turbulence interaction (ATI) is one of the dominant noise generation mechanisms existing in various aerodynamic machineries including aero-engines, helicopters and wind/tidal turbines which are operating based on rotating blades. The core mechanism of the ATI noise is that turbulent mean flow generated upstream impinges on the leading edge (LE) of an aerofoil creating a high level of pressure fluctuations around the LE that propagates with the speed of sound. The reduction of ATI noise is of significant importance to many industries and therefore has been one of the primary subjects in the area of compressible aerodynamics and aeroacoustics.

Recently, it was discovered at the University of Southampton that a novel leading-edge geometry based on a sinusoidal profile is very effective in reducing the ATI noise (JW Kim, S Haeri, Journal of Computational Physics, 287, pp. 1-17). They are currently focusing on understanding the fundamental mechanisms as to how the wavy leading edge (WLE) controls the ATI event. The investigation of this fundamental mechanism requires a large number of high-resolution numerical simulations which are usually very time consuming even on massively parallel supercomputers. One particular process that causes a high computational overhead is the generation of the upstream turbulence during the simulation. The synthetic turbulence must be created with noise-free conditions satisfied in order to ensure clean acoustic solutions at the far field. Existing methods to generate noise-free turbulence are computationally expensive and inefficient. Therefore, it is urgently required to find a solution to this problem in order to make a fast progress in this study against other competitors from Europe and USA. In this project, a new fast method will be mathematically re-formulated without involving expensive integro-differential operators and special functions that are commonly used in the existing methods. Also an efficient implementation strategy will be sought based on a control surface approach rather than control volume in order to minimise the amount of operations as well as memory required. Based upon a successful development of such a method, the PhD student will be able to substantially speed up the simulations and actively participate in the investigation of the fundamental mechanisms of ATI noise and its reduction in the later part of the project.