Fixed-body retarded acoustic loading formula 2026-10-14
For a fixed impermeable object, the Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings equation has a volume acoustic quadrupole and a surface acoustic dipole, with no mass-injection term. If is the total force exerted on the fluid and the integrated Lighthill stress tensor, the acoustic compact-source approximation in the acoustic far field gives the displayed pressure at retarded time. A force convention directed onto the body reverses the loading sign. The retarded acoustic Green function carries when the wave operator is .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2009 iii Paper 78 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Let use the Heaviside step function, and , so that points from the body into the fluid. The kinematic boundary condition gives on the surface. In the exterior, mass conservation and the Euler equations for an inviscid fluid areProducts with are understood distributionally, using and . With , the extended continuity equation isThe corresponding extended momentum equation isbecause its advective surface term is . Differentiate continuity in time and substitute the divergence of momentum. Subtracting gives the Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings equationwhere the inviscid Lighthill stress tensor isIf denotes total pressure, this tensor includes the constant ambient pressure . Its contribution cancels the corresponding surface term exactly. For radiation integrals it is convenient to subtract from both terms, making with . The displayed source identity is unchanged by this consistent pressure-gauge subtraction.
Assume no incoming sound and no free initial acoustic field. Put , , , and . Convolution with the retarded acoustic Green function gives the three source integrals, for an observer outside the body:These are the surface thickness, surface loading and volume quadrupole contributions. The retarded surface Dirac delta distributions must remain inside the integrals: integrating them over a moving retarded surface produces the moving-surface retarded Jacobian, and is not generally the same as simply substituting one retarded time into an instantaneous surface integral.
For an acoustic compact-source approximation, suppose the dominant sources have size , source frequency scale , and . Also require and the acoustic far field . Then , , and the leading source integrals use the common time . Slow source motion relative to is implicit in this leading retardation approximation. DefineThus is net displaced mass per unit time, is the fluid pressure force on the body, and is the integrated excess Lighthill stress tensor. The minus sign in fixes the requested loading convention; the force on the fluid is opposite. On the radiating terms, , givingSpatial derivatives of produce near-field terms of orders and , omitted here. Neglecting source delays is a separate approximation from discarding those observer near-field terms. If a leading integrated source vanishes by symmetry, its first nonzero delay correction can be as important as another retained multipole.
For the translating sphere, write its center as , with a unit vector, and its velocity as . Let , and . Impermeability gives . Since its volume is constant,in the leading compact formula. The individual local thickness sources have scale , but their net monopole cancels.
At first order in amplitude and leading order in , the exterior incompressible velocity potential is , where is measured from the mean center. It has at . Linear Bernoulli equation gives there. Since ,This is the added mass of a sphere. The explicit leading loading contribution isIt scales as . In homentropic small-amplitude flow the volume stress is quadratic to leading order, over volume , so the volume acoustic quadrupole has scaleIt is smaller than the linear dipole by and can contain a second harmonic.
For completeness, the exact thickness-source integral has a nonzero first delay correction even though . Its first spatial moment isExpand its integrand at . The leading nonzero translating-sphere acoustic thickness dipole is thereforeIt too scales as . Thus zero net-volume monopole does not mean zero thickness radiation. The full leading linear sound, summing thickness and loading, isThe leading compact equation gives the requested zero and added-mass terms; this extra delay calculation is necessary to obtain the complete linear field when its nominal monopole has cancelled.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2012 iii Paper 78 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Let the fluid approach a uniform, quiescent state at infinity. Use the outward unit normal vector , pointing from the object into the fluid. Write for the Heaviside step function, , and . With the viscous stress tensor , defineThus is the Lighthill stress tensor, and is the surface loading exerted on the fluid. The total force on the object has the opposite sign. Extend by zero inside the object. Since the boundary is fixed and impermeable, , and the distributional mass conservation and momentum conservation equations areFor example, the surface contribution to the momentum equation is . Differentiating the first equation in time and subtracting the divergence of the second gives the fixed-body Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings equation:There is no acoustic thickness noise: a fixed impermeable boundary injects no mass. Apply the retarded acoustic Green function , where . The supplied surface-delta identity converts the loading term to a surface integral. For an exterior observer, the required integral equation isThis acoustic analogy is an exact rearrangement of the fluid equations; source approximations enter later. In the distant linear acoustic region, .
The acoustic far field requires observer distance much larger than the source extent and , so derivatives of the retarded phase dominate derivatives of . The acoustic compact-source approximation requires , so the source's differential propagation delays can be neglected. These conditions concern different lengths and neither implies the other. Put , , and define the loading and stress momentsThe leading compact acoustic far field isThe surface term is an acoustic dipole; the volume term is an acoustic quadrupole. The plus sign of the loading term follows from the minus sign of its spatial divergence and the derivative of retarded time.
For the power comparison, assume low Mach number , high Reynolds number, eddy size , characteristic time , and stress magnitude . Keep the prescribed turbulent region and its leading volume stress comparable when inserting the object; neglect changes of source statistics and exceptional cancellations of the leading moments. Compactness follows from . Since and the outgoing acoustic intensity is , the volume power isIf the object's size is comparable to and its fluctuating resultant loading is , thenAngular factors and dimensionless loading coefficients have been omitted. The acoustic dipole and acoustic quadrupole interference vanishes in the leading power integrated over a full sphere, by odd angular parity; individual directions can show interference.
A size threshold also requires a loading model. For a small nonseparating object of size in an approximately inviscid, smoothly varying incident eddy, a spatially uniform pressure has zero resultant on its closed surface. The first surviving loading is the pressure-gradient or added mass force, . Under these explicitly stated assumptions,The two mechanisms become comparable at ; for smaller objects the cases with and without the object have the same leading order of power. This is the small-body loading-noise threshold. It is not a geometry-independent size law: a separated drag force fluctuating on the original eddy time instead gives and . If both force and time are set by body-scale eddies, , their loading power is and comparison with the original volume source gives . Each estimate states which source time and force it uses.
The physical distinction is momentum conservation. Unforced turbulence in a fluid supplies internal stresses, whose net-force contribution cancels and leaves acoustic quadrupole radiation. The supported object exchanges momentum with the fluid and the external support, permitting a time-dependent resultant force and acoustic dipole radiation. One fewer retarded derivative makes the loading radiation more efficient at low Mach number.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 iii Paper 70 1 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
In the Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings equation, the other source types are a surface acoustic monopole associated with acoustic thickness noise, and a volume acoustic quadrupole involving the Lighthill stress tensor. On an impermeable material surface, fluid and surface normal velocities agree. There is no through-surface mass-flux source; the remaining thickness source is . For a rigid body, the leading acoustic compact-source approximation to that source hasThus there is no leading net-volume acoustic monopole. To neglect thickness radiation beyond that leading cancellation, assume negligible volume displacement, as for ideal thin blades, or that its higher multipoles are small compared with the retained acoustic loading noise. Rigidity alone does not make a moving finite-volume body's local thickness source identically zero.
The volume acoustic quadrupole may be neglected for low Mach number motion when exterior turbulent or nonlinear stresses do not provide a competing strong source. We also assume small linear acoustics perturbations, a uniform reference sound speed, and negligible relevant viscous and entropy sources. These are source-strength approximations, particularly important if a loading contribution itself cancels by symmetry. Under them, the retained acoustic dipole is the force exerted by the object on the fluid, with the sign used in the previous solution.
Let , , and . In the acoustic far field, is large compared with the object and . For a source of size with and small surface Mach number, source-dependent delays and the Doppler factor can be neglected to leading order. The surface integral then contains just the total force . Differentiating its retarded time, rather than its spreading factor, gives the radiating termThe sign follows from . Differentiating or the direction instead produces the lower-order near field. A constant total force does not radiate at this leading compact order.