A Comparison of the Noise Characteristics of a Conventional Slat and Krueger Flap

An aeroacoustic test of two types of leading-edge high-lift devices has been conducted in the NASA Langley Quiet Flow Facility. The test compares a conventional slat with a notional equivalent-mission Krueger flap. The test matrix includes points that allow for direct comparison of the conventional and Krueger devices for equivalent-mission configurations, where the two high-lift devices satisfy the same lift requirements for a free air flight path at the same cruise airfoil angle of attack. Measurements are made for multiple Mach numbers and directivity angles. Results indicate that the Krueger flap shows similar agreement to the expected power law scaling of a conventional flap, both in terms of Strouhal number and fixed frequency (as a surrogate for Helmholtz number). Directivity patterns vary depending on the specific slat and Krueger orientations. Varying the slat gap while holding overlap constant has the same influence on both the conventional slat and Krueger flap acoustic signature. Closing the gap shows dramatic reduction in levels for both devices. Varying the Krueger overlap has a different effect on the data when compared to varying the slat overlap, but analysis is limited by acoustic sources that regularly present themselves in model-scale wind tunnel testing but are not present for full-scale vehicles. The Krueger cavity is found to have some influence on level and directivity, though not as much as the other considered parameter variations. Overall, while the spectra of the two devices are different in detail, their scaling behavior for varying parameters is extremely similar.