A theoretical study of serrated leading edges in aerofoil and vortical gust interaction noise

Serrated leading edges are one of the most promising passive aerodynamic control methods for the reduction of aerofoil–turbulence interaction noise. To elucidate the possible physical mechanisms, the current paper studies the simplified set-up with aerofoil–vortical gust interaction and proposes an analytical model by incorporating Fourier transform into the Wiener–Hopf method. The proposed model suggests that the serrations operate on the incident vortical gusts as convolution, which leads to the innovative concept that models serrations as transfer functions in the wavenumber domain. Overall, the current theoretical study could provide a unique insight of the inherent aerodynamic noise control mechanisms of leading-edge serrations.