Effect of the Separation Distance on the Aeroacoustic Source of Multiple Shallow Cavities

Flow over ducted shallow cavities can excite fluid resonant oscillations. A common industrial application is the flow in corrugated pipes that can be modeled as a series of consecutive shallow cavities. In the current study, the effect of the separation distance on the aeroacoustic source of multiple shallow cavities is investigated. The standing wave method (SWM) is used to measure the source, where multiple microphones reconstruct the acoustic standing wave upstream and downstream of the cavities. The effect of the ratio between the separation distance to cavity length is investigated for a practical range from 0.5 to 1.375 for two- and three-cavity configurations. At low and intermediate sound levels, constructive hydrodynamic interference, resulting in a strong source, is observed for the extremum spacing ratios of 0.5 and 1.375. However, at high excitation levels, 10% and higher, the source, slightly but consistently, decreases upon increasing the separation ratio. These trends persist for both the double- and triple-cavity configurations. On the other hand, the separation distance of destructive interference is found to depend on the number of cavities of the tested configuration. Particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements of the constructive interference cases show strong synchronized vorticity shedding in all cavities. Each cavity contribution to the total aeroacoustic source is then examined by means of Howe's analogy, and the percentage contribution of each cavity is found to depend on the excitation level.