Isolated Rotor Blade Shape Sensitivity for Aeroacoustic Optimization Using a Discrete Adjoint Framework

A discrete adjoint framework is developed to optimize rotor self-noise from steady fluid simulations in the rotating frame. To this end, a simplified expression of the off-body frequency-domain Ffowcs-Williams and Hawkings (FW-H) equation is derived for far-field observers, following the model of Hanson and Parzych (1993) originally written for on-body surfaces. The latter is implemented and compared against the results given by an established time-domain FW-H solver. Far-field acoustic pressure sensitivities are derived analytically and validated by comparison with second-order accurate finite differences. The sensitivities of any objective function expressed in terms of the acoustic pressure can therefore be reconstructed. Then the discrete adjoint of a Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes solver provides the objective function gradients with respect to the blade shape parameters. The complete workflow is validated against finite difference evaluations on an isolated open rotor in cruise conditions.