Acoustics-based Active Control of Unsteady Flow Dynamics using Reinforcement Learning Driven Synthetic Jets
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Flow generated noise are caused shear flows and, hence, they can be used as feedback to control the flow. Existing flow control uses state variables like velocity, pressure, or vorticity, none use acoustic observables as the primary control signal. It is tough to model a classical control algorithm using sound level but data-driven approaches are not as do not have to explicitly model the physics. We present an acoustics-driven framework for active control of unsteady wake dynamics behind a circular cylinder, in which sound is used as the primary feedback signal for flow regulation. The approach integrates deep reinforcement learning (DRL) with synthetic jet actuation, using acoustic measurements acquired from a downstream hydrophone array to inform control decisions in real time. Unlike conventional flow control strategies that rely on velocity or pressure field sensing, the proposed method establishes a direct link between far-field acoustic emissions and near-field actuation. Within this formulation, the DRL agent learns control policies that exploit acoustic signatures of vortex shedding to modulate synthetic jet actuation on the cylinder surface. The resulting control suppresses coherent wake structures and mitigates flow-induced disturbances. Quantitative results show reductions of up to 9.5\% in radiated noise and 23.8\% in drag under the tested conditions, accompanied by a marked attenuation of wake oscillations, for a DFG 2D benchmark flow with Reynolds number 100. These findings demonstrate that acoustic sensing alone can provide sufficient information for effective closed-loop flow control and highlight its potential as a non-intrusive feedback modality for coupled aerodynamic and aeroacoustic optimization in bluff-body flows. The codes for the algorithm can be found here: https://github.com/Siddharth-Rout/FlowControlDRL.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".