Direct Numerical Simulation of a Turbulent Boundary Layer over Acoustic Liners

The nacelle of aircraft engines is coated with acoustic liners to reduce engine noise. An undesirable effect of these liners is that they increase aerodynamic drag. We study this drag penalty by performing Direct Numerical Simulations of a turbulent boundary layer over an acoustic liner array at friction Reynolds number, Re _τ ≈ 850–2500. We use this simulation to confirm several findings that we recently brought forward using a simpler channel flow setup [1]. We show that acoustic liners lead to high wall-normal velocity fluctuations that can be directly correlated with a modulation of the classical near-wall cycle and to an increase in drag. We also confirm that the acoustic liners act as permeable surface roughness and the non-linear Forchheimer coefficient is the relevant permeability parameter for scaling the drag increase.