The Journal of the Acoustical Society of KoreaISSN:1225-4428(Print) 2287-3775(Online)한국음향학회

A pressure relief valve is generally used to prevent piping systems from being broken due to high pressure gas flows. However, the sudden pressure drop caused by the pressure relief valve produces high acoustic energy which propagates in the form of compressible acoustic waves in the pipe and sometimes causes severe vibration of the pipe structure, thereby resulting in its failure. In this study, internal aerodynamic noise due to valve flow is estimated for a simple contraction-expansion pipe by combining the LES (Large-Eddy Simulation) technique with the wavenumber-frequency analysis, which allows the decomposition of fluctuating pressure into incompressible hydrodynamic pressure and compressible acoustic pressure. In order to increase the convergence, the steady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations are numerically solved. And then, for the unsteady flow analysis with high accuracy, the unsteady LES is performed with the steady result as the initial value. The wavenumber-frequency analysis is finally performed using the unsteady flow simulation results. The wavenumber-frequency analysis is shown to separate the compressible pressure fluctuation in the flow field from the incompressible one. This result can provide the accurate information for the source causing so-called acoustic-induced-vibration of a piping system.