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Diffuser perforation effects on the

performance of a vent silencer
ARTICLE in NOISE CONTROL ENGINEERING JOURNAL JUNE 2013
Impact Factor: 0.46 DOI: 10.3397/1/3761030

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Diffuser perforation effects on the performance of a vent silencer

Nawaf H. Saeida)
(Received: 15 October 2012; Revised: 13 May 2013; Accepted: 13 May 2013)

Numerical simulations are carried out for 3D steady compressible turbulent

ow of air inside a vent silencer to investigate the effect of the diffuser perforation
on the ow structure and acoustic performance of the silencer. The governing
equations for the turbulent ow are solved using the nite volume method.
The broadband noise source model is used in the simulations to predict the
acoustic power level in the silencer. The inlet total absolute pressure ranges from
250 to 1000 kPa and the outlet absolute pressure is set to atmospheric. The results
are presented in terms of the transmission loss of the silencer. The parameters
considered in the present study are the diffuser holes diameters and the length
of the perforated pipe in addition to the inow conditions. In all the simulation
cases, the inlet sound power level was in the range of the practical measurements
of 120 to 150 dB. The results are presented to show the ow structure and the
acoustic performance. The results show that increasing either the diffuser hole
diameters or the length of the perforated pipe, the transmission loss of the
silencer increases. 2013 Institute of Noise Control Engineering.
Primary subject classication: 34.1; Secondary subject classication: 52.5

INTRODUCTION

Vent silencers or blow-off silencers are used to reduce

the noise level generated when high pressure process
uids are blown off to the atmosphere. This noise can
be generated due to the high velocity ow through the
valve and turbulence created around any obstacle in
the line that suddenly restricts or changes the ow direction. High noise levels generated in these cases are
dangerous to plant personnel health and safety as well
as environmentally unacceptable. Typical applications
for vent silencers are in oil and gas processing, industrial processing, chemical processing, safety relief valve
systems, steam ejector discharges, air compressor vents,
and others. In general, the aerodynamic noise can be
attenuated by using either a dissipative or a reactive
silencer. A dissipative silencer uses the sound absorption phenomena to take the acoustic energy out of the
ow, as it propagates through the silencer by adding
porous material (ber glass or mineral wool). Reactive
silencers reect the sound waves back towards the
source and prevent sound from being transmitted along
the pipe, such as the expansion chamber silencer which
may consists of one or more chambers. In practice, the
vent silencer uses both the dissipative and the reactive
a)

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Institut Teknologi

Brunei, Jalan Tungku Link, Gadong BE 1410 BRUNEI
DARUSSALAM; email: n_h_saeid@yahoo.com.

Noise Control Engr. J. 61 (3), May-June 2013

principles. Vent silencer usually consist of: (1) the inlet

diffuser contains small holes which are breaking up
the large jet stream of gas into many small jets and
modify the noise spectrum for easier attenuation; (2)
the gas then enters the expansion chamber which is used
to smooth and uniformly distribute the ow while reducing acoustic energy and (3) the separator lining in the
expansion chamber used to absorb the acoustic energy
and attenuate the noise before the discharge to the outside. The silencer size is a function of the ow conditions and the degree of noise reduction to be achieved.
Recently, a series of numerical studies focused on using computational uid dynamics (CFD) to investigate
the aerodynamic noise in silencers. Middelberg et al.1
have modeled numerically different congurations of
simple expansion chamber mufers using computational uid dynamics (CFD) in order to determine their
acoustic response. The authors concluded that CFD can
be successfully used to evaluate both the mean ow and
acoustic performance of an expansion chamber mufer,
with various modications including bafes and
extended inlet/outlet pipes. Three-dimensional CFD
simulations are presented by Broatch et al.2 to compute
the transmission loss of the exhaust mufer. The authors
reported that the results obtained using the CFD
methods compare favorably with a conventional FEM
calculation, mostly in the ability of the procedure to
account for dissipative processes inside the mufer.
Panigrahi and Munjal3 used CFD technique to
355

evaluate the pressure drop characteristics of four major

backpressure-intensive components of automotive
mufers. The effect of perforation diameter on the
pressure drop in the cross-ow elements has been investigated. Techniques are proposed by Panigrahi and
Munjal3 to achieve lower backpressure without signicantly affecting the transmission loss performance, with
the same overall length and volume of the mufer. A
three-dimensional CFD analysis is carried out by Hu
et al.4 to investigate the relations of porosities, ow velocity and diameter of the holes with the pressure loss
in a cross-ow perforated mufer. A practical perforated
mufer is used to validate this method for pressure loss
computation. CFD was used by Wang et al.5 to explore
the aerodynamic performance of a complicated resistance mufer. Wang et al.5 concluded that parametric
study leads to the performance of the modied mufer
that is better than the original mufer. Most recently,
Li et al.6 have considered the CFD simulation in a
monolithic mufer to investigate the air duct resistance
in the train air duct. The pressure loss and internal ow
eld of the mufer are presented and validated. Tupov
and Chugunkov7 presented numerical simulation of
the venting of under-expanded steam jets into the atmosphere. The specic mechanism of noise formation and
a new method of predicting the noise characteristics
of steam jets are also presented. CFD approach is
employed by Ji et al.8 to predict and analyze the
acoustic attenuation performance of straight-through
perforated tube reactive silencers and resonators. The
noise generated in vents usually does not have any
distinct tones, and the sound energy is continuously
distributed over a broad range of frequencies. In these
situations involving broadband noise, statistical turbulence quantities which are readily computable from
Reynolds-averaged NavierStokes equations can be
utilized, in conjunction with semi-empirical correlations
to predict the acoustic power9.
The 3D unsteady ow computation is performed to
investigate the inuence of mean ow on acoustic attenuation performance of straight-through perforated tube
reactive silencers and resonators. The geometry of the
silencer plays an important role in its ability to reduce
the noise level. The effect of different parameters on
the silencer performance can be carried out using computational uid dynamics (CFD) before the silencer is
manufactured. In CFD analysis, the computational domain is divided into an array of small cells (mesh generation), and the governing equations for uid and
associated phenomena are solved numerically within
each cell. In a turbulent ow model, equations for conservation of mass, momentum, and energy are solved together with the turbulence model equations. From the
computed solutions, information on velocity, pressure,
356

Noise Control Engr. J. 61 (3), May-June 2013

and turbulence are available for the whole silencer.

Accurate ow simulation in any silencer is an essential
part of the design procedure of the silencer. The most
important part affecting the performance of the silencer
is the diffuser perforation sizing and geometry. In this
study a parametric study is carried out to investigate
the effect of the diffuser perforation on the ow structure and acoustic performance of a vent silencer. The
geometry of the vent silencer considered in this study
is shown in Fig. 1.

GOVERNING EQUATIONS

Turbulent ows are characterized by uctuating

velocity elds. In Reynolds averaging, the solution
variables in the instantaneous (exact) NavierStokes
equations are decomposed into the mean (ensembleaveraged or time-averaged) and uctuating components.
The continuity and the Reynolds-averaged Navier
Stokes (RANS) equations can be written as10:
@
rui 0
1
@xi
 

 @p
@

@
@ui @uj 2 @ul
rui uj

 ij
@xj @xi 3 @xl
@xj
@xi @xj

@ 
2
r u0 l u0 j ;

@xj
where ui and i are the mean and uctuating velocity
components (i = 1, 2, 3) and the overbar represents the
mean value. The Kronecker delta ij = 1 if i = j and
otherwise it is zero. The Reynolds-averaged approach
to turbulence modeling requires that the Reynolds
stresses in Eqn. (2) be appropriately modeled. A common method employs the Boussinesq hypothesis to
relate the Reynolds stresses to the mean velocity gradients:




@ui @uj
2
@uk
0 0
r ul uj mt

ij ; 3

rk mt
@xj @xi
@xk
3
where the turbulent (or eddy) viscosity, mt, denition
depends on the turbulence model and k is the

diffuser
Inlet pipe

inflow

Fig. 1Silencer geometry.

outflow

turbulent kinetic energy. In the present study the standard k  e turbulence model11 and the shear-stress
transport (SST) k  o with near wall corrections turbulence model12 are tested for the simple silencer ow
without diffuser as discussed in the validation section.
The governing equations and the details of this turbulence models can be found in FLUENT documentation13. For the present compressible uid ow, the
density of the uid is calculated from the ideal gas equation of state. Therefore the energy equation should be
solved. For turbulent ow, neglecting the viscous heating, the energy equation can be written as:

 

Cp mt @T
@

@
S; 4
uj rE p

Prt @xj
@xj
@xj
where E is the total energy (E = CpT  p/r + V2/2), is
the thermal conductivity, Cp is the specic heat, Prt is
the turbulent Prandtl number (Prt = 0.85) and S is the
volumetric heat source.
The aerodynamic noise theory is based on the Lighthills acoustic analogy14, which states that the exact
NavierStokes equations for turbulent uid ow are
rearranged to form the wave equation for the uctuating
uid density. Several computational approaches and
models have been proposed for aerodynamic noise
prediction for different applications. The broadband
noise source model is usually used to determine which
portion of the ow is primarily responsible for the noise
generation. This model needs what typical Reynoldsaveraged NavierStokes models would provide, such
as the mean velocity eld, turbulent kinetic energy (k)
and the dissipation rate (e). Lilley7 used the Lighthills
acoustic analogy14 to derive the formula for acoustic
power generated due to unit volume of isotropic turbulence (in W/m3) as:
W ae ro eMt5 ;

where W is the acoustic power, ae is the model constant,

which is set to 0.1 based on the calibration of Sarkar and
Hussaini15 using direct numerical simulation of isotropic turbulence. ro is the uid density at the free-stream
(standard atmospheric conditions), e is the rate of dissipation of the turbulence kinetic energy and Mt is dened
as:
p
Mt 2k =co ;
6
where co is the speed of sound at the free-stream
(standard atmospheric conditions). The acoustic power
in dB, can be computed from:


W
;
7
LW 10log
Wref
Noise Control Engr. J. 61 (3), May-June 2013

where Wref is the reference

(Wref = 10  12 W/m3).

acoustic

power

NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS METHOD

Due to the symmetry a slice of 12 is considered as

computational domain as shown in Fig. 2. Some of
the dimensions of the silencer are maintained throughout the present study and given in the table in Fig. 2.
The silencer computational domain is generated and
meshed using ANSYS 14 software16. The computational domain was extended beyond and outside the silencer exit, as shown in Fig. 2. This is necessary for
simulating the entrained air outside the silencer and to
get realistic exit boundary conditions at the silencer
exit. The computational mesh consists of tetrahedron
cells generated using ANSYS14 software. The inlet
section is divided into 30 cells to simulate the pressure
inlet boundary condition. The computational cells were
clustered near the perforation in the diffuser and near
the solid walls. Five layers of inations were used near
the solid walls in the computational domain to implement the near wall corrections in the turbulence model.
The mesh is exported to the solver build in FLUENT
software (3D double precision) where the governing
equations are solved numerically using the nite volume method. The Broadband Noise Source Model is
used in the simulations to predict the ow and acoustic power level in the silencer. The working uid is
air and it is considered as a compressible ideal gas
with the following properties: specic heat at constant
pressure Cp = 1006.43 J/kgK, thermal conductivity
= 0.0242 W/mK and dynamic viscosity
m = 1.7894  10  5 kg/ms. The density and the speed
of sound at standard conditions are: ro = 1.225 kg/m3
and co = 340 m/s. The boundary condition is set as noslip and adiabatic at all the solid surfaces of the silencer.
The side surfaces (generated from the slice cut) are set
as symmetry, where the normal gradient is zero. For
compressible ows, it is recommended by FLUENT13
to set the operating pressure to zero to minimize the
errors due to pressure uctuations. The inlet total absolute pressure (po_inlet) ranges from 250 to 1000 kPa and
the outlet absolute pressure is set to atmospheric
(101.325 kPa). The inlet total temperature and the backow total temperature are kept at 300 K. The turbulent
intensity at the inlet is assumed to be 25% to get practical values of the inlet sound power level. At the outlet,
the turbulence boundary conditions will be used only
in case of reverse ow from the outlet. A turbulence
intensity of 1% or less is generally considered low
and turbulence intensities greater than 10% are considered high13. In the present study the turbulent intensity
is assumed to be 10% at the outlet for all the cases.
357

Ro

Ro
Ro

12o

5Ro

Lpor
Ri

Ld

Lin

Ri (mm)

Lin (mm)

Ld (mm)

S (mm)

Ro (mm)

L (mm)

85

150

430

15

200

1000

Fig. 2Computational domain.

The inlet hydraulic diameter is set as diffuser diameter
(0.17 m) and the outlet hydraulic diameter is set as the
silencer diameter (0.4 m).
The second order upwind scheme is used for the
numerical solution of the governing equations. The
discretized equations were solved based pressure correction method using SIMPLE algorithm17. This
method is based on the iterative solution and the under
relaxation factors of 0.2, 0.3, and 0.8 for solving the
pressure, momentum and turbulence model equations
respectively were necessary to get converged solution
for most of the cases. The convergence criterion is based
on the residual in the governing equations. The maximum residual in the energy equation was 10  5 and
the residual of other variables were lower than 10  3 in
the converged solution. In all the computational cases
the global heat and mass balance are satised in the converged solution within  10  3%.

best known is the power-law velocity prole expressed

as18:

u
r 1=n
1
:
8
umax
R
The comparison of numerical results generated using
two turbulence models and empirical velocity proles at
the exit section of the silencer without the presence of
the diffuser is shown in Fig. 3. The results show that
the shear-stress transport (SST) k  o model prediction
is closer to the empirical velocity proles than that
generated using the standard k  e model. Hence the
1.1
1
0.9
0.8
0.7

VALIDATION AND MESH SENSITIVITY

ANALYSIS

0.6
SST k- model

0.5

k- model

0.4

Power Law with n=7

0.3

The mathematical model and the numerical results

are validated by comparing the numerical velocity
prole at the exit section of the silencer (at 1 m from
the inlet) without the presence of the diffuser. The inlet
total absolute pressure (po_inlet) is set to 500 kPa in this
case. Due to lack of experimental data, the ow through
the silencer without diffuser is compared with the
simple pipe ow. Numerous empirical velocity proles
exist for turbulent pipe ow. The simplest and the
358

Noise Control Engr. J. 61 (3), May-June 2013

Power Law with n=9

0.2
0.1
0
0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1.1

Fig. 3Comparison of numerical and

empirical velocity proles at the exit
section of the silencer without the
presence of the diffuser.

Fig. 4Velocity magnitudes along the length of the perforated pipe using different mesh sizes with
Lpor = 140 mm, d = 9 mm and po_inlet = 1000 kPa.
shear-stress transport (SST) k  o model is employed
to generate the rest of the results in the present study.
The accuracy of the results is veried using different
mesh sizes and checking the mass balance of the ow.
The simulation of the ow through the holes along
the length of the perforated pipe in the diffuser is the
most sensitive zone to the size of the mesh elements.
Different mesh element sizes of the diffuser holes were
tested to get grid independent results for the ow in
the silencer with Lpor = 290 mm, d = 9 mm and
po_inlet = 1000 kPa. The calculated velocity magnitudes
along the length of the perforated pipe are presented in
Fig. 4 using different mesh sizes.
It can be seen that the mesh with element size of
0.5 mm generates results for the velocity magnitude
along the perforated tube with negligible discrepancy
than the smaller and larger elements. Hence the results
generated using the mesh with element size of 0.5 mm
can be considered as mesh independent results. In order
to reduce the computational time, the mesh with element
size of 0.5 mm is adopted to generate the results in all
the cases in the parametric study.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The silencers performance can be measured by the

difference in sound power level at the inlet and outlet
of the silencer (Lw), usually called the transmission
loss or noise reduction. In all the simulation cases, the

inlet sound power level was around 120 to 145 dB.

The local values of the sound power levels are averaged
and the area weighted averaged difference between the
inlet and outlet of the silencer is calculated and denoted
by Lw. At the beginning, the silencer is assumed without a diffuser, or it is just a sudden expansion in the
ow. In this case, the calculated area weighted average
is Lw = 14.3 dB, for the case of inlet total absolute
pressure of po_inlet = 1000 kPa. This means that the outlet noise power is still considerably high according to
most standards. Therefore the diffuser is an important
part of the silencer to reduce the noise level out from
the silencer. Parametric study is carried out to investigate the effect of the diffuser hole diameter d and the
length of the perforated pipe, Lpor, on the silencer performance. The transmission loss values of the silencer
with different parameters are presented in Tables 1
and 2. The results tabulated in Tables 1 and 2 show that
as the inlet pressure increases the transmission loss
decreases and the silencer become less effective.
The numerical results show a relatively small change
in the transmission loss by changing the holes diameter
from 6 to 9 mm as shown in Table 1. Considerable
improvement in the transmission loss values can be seen
in Table 1 for the cases with hole diameter of 12 mm.
Note that the distance between the hole centers is xed
at 15 mm for all the cases. This means that the spacing
between the holes for the case of d = 12 mm is only

Table 1Effect of hole diameter on the average Lw (dB) with Lpor = 140 mm.
po_inlet = 250 kPa

po_inlet = 500 kPa

po_inlet = 1000 kPa

47.0
59.3
58.6
62.8

28.3
37.6
36.6
42.0

14.3
19.6
18.7
25.1

Without Diffuser
d = 6 mm
d = 9 mm
d = 12 mm

Noise Control Engr. J. 61 (3), May-June 2013

359

Table 2Effect of length of the perforated pipe on the average Lw (dB) with d = 9 mm.
Without Diffuser
Lpor = 80 mm
Lpor = 110 mm
Lpor = 140 mm
Lpor = 170 mm
Lpor = 200 mm

po_inlet = 250 kPa

po_inlet = 500 kPa

po_inlet = 1000 kPa

47.0
57.3
59.1
58.6
64.9
66.3

28.3
32.5
34.8
36.6
39.7
41.4

14.3
15.1
16.4
18.7
22.8
23.5

3 mm. The designer needs to take this in to account for

the diffuser material selection.
The length of the perforated pipe of the diffuser has
an effect on the number of the small jets from the diffuser holes; therefore, small length of the diffuser
means less number of jets with high turbulence intensity. The numerical results listed in Table 2 show that
increasing the length of the perforated pipe of the diffuser
leads to an improvement of the silencer performance and
increases its transmission loss for all the cases.
The contour plots of absolute pressure, velocity
magnitude and acoustic power at the mid-plane (passing
through the centers of the diffuser holes) are generated
using FLUENT software13. Figures 5 to 7 show the case
of the medium size of Lpor = 140 mm and d = 9 mm
under different inlet stagnation pressures.
The contours of the static pressure show high pressure values at the inlet and at the closed end of the
diffuser. The static pressure distribution is similar

Static Pressure contours (Pa)

for different inlet pressure with different scales. The

contour plots show the importance of the extension
of the computational domain beyond and outside the
silencer exit. The velocity contours show how the
ow dispersed after the silencer exit. The contour
plots for the acoustic power demonstrate the sound
power generation by the small jets of the diffuser
and then how this power is dissipated in the silencer.

CONCLUSIONS

The effect of the diffuser perforation on the ow

structure and acoustic performance of the silencer is
studied numerically. A 3D model of a symmetry slice
of 12 is considered as computational domain. The
computational domain was extended beyond and outside the silencer exit for simulating the entrained air
outside the silencer and to get realistic exit boundary
conditions. At the beginning, the silencer is assumed
without a diffuser, or it is just a sudden expansion in

Velocity magnitude contours (m/s)

Acoustic power contours (dB)

Fig. 5Contour plots for the case of Lpor = 140 mm, d = 9 mm and po_inlet = 250 kPa.
360

Noise Control Engr. J. 61 (3), May-June 2013

Static Pressure contours (Pa)

Velocity magnitude contours (m/s)

Acoustic power contours (dB)

Fig. 6Contour plots for the case of Lpor = 140 mm, d = 9 mm and po_inlet = 500 kPa.
the ow. In this case, the calculated transmission loss
was small and the exit sound power level was considerably high according to most standards. The numerical
results show that the hole diameter has an effect on
the values of the transmission loss. Considerable
increase in the transmission loss values is obtained for
the cases when the hole diameter increases from 9 to
12 mm. The numerical results show that increasing
the length of the perforated pipe of the diffuser leads
to improve the silencer performance and increase its
transmission loss for all the cases. This is due to

Static Pressure contours (Pa)

the fact that short diffuser has small number of jets

with high turbulence intensity and sound power while
longer diffusers generate outlet ow with lower turbulence intensity. The recommendations are to design the
silencer with a long diffuser which has large hole diameter with the limitation of the present study.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author would like to acknowledge the valuable

comments from the anonymous reviewers. Their

Velocity magnitude contours (m/s)

Acoustic power contours (dB)

Fig. 7Contour plots for the case of Lpor = 140 mm, d = 9 mm and po_inlet = 1000 kPa.
Noise Control Engr. J. 61 (3), May-June 2013

361

comments lead to the improvement of the article. The

author wish to acknowledge the support from the previous employer The University of Nottingham
Malaysia Campus as part of this study is carried
out using their facilities.

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