A comparison of impedance boundary conditions for flow acoustics

Acoustic liners remain a key technology for reducing community noise from aircraft engines. The choice of optimal impedance relies heavily on the modeling of sound absorption by liners under grazing flows. The Myers condition assumes an infinitely thin boundary layer, but several impedance conditions have recently been proposed to include a small but finite boundary layer thickness. This paper presents a comparison of these impedance conditions against an exact solution for a simple benchmark problem and for parameters representative of inlet and bypass ducts on turbofan engines. The boundary layer thickness can have a significant impact on sound absorption, although its actual influence depends strongly on the details of the incident sound field. The impedance condition proposed by Brambley seems to provide some improvements in predicting sound absorption compared to the Myers condition. The boundary layer profile is found to have little influence on sound absorption.