Aeroacoustic source prediction using material surfaces bounding the flow

This article presents an extension of Liepmann's characterization of an aeroacoustic source in terms of the motion of a bounding surface containing the source region. Rather than using an arbitrary surface, we express the problem in terms of bounding material surfaces, identified by Lagrangian coherent structures (LCSs), which demarcate flow into regions with distinct dynamics. The sound generation of the flow is written in terms of the motion of these material surfaces using the Kirchhoff integral equation, so that the flow noise problem now appears like that of a deforming body. This approach provides a natural connection between the flow topology, as revealed through LCS analysis, and sound generation mechanisms. As examples, we examine two-dimensional cases of co-rotating vortices and leap-frogging vortex pairs and compare estimated sound sources to vortex sound theory.