Abstract
The aeroacoustic analogy is reviewed. The importance of generalized functions is demonstrated deriving Gauss like theorems in three and two dimensions. It is shown how the Dirac delta function plays an essential part in the theory of fundamental solutions (Green’s function). The concept of generalized derivatives as introduced by Farassat is derived in a consistent way for the time derivative and vector operations, for example gradient, divergence and curl. Applied to the wave equation, the impact of these operators when acting on surface distributions is presented. The compatibility conditions which apply at static and moving surfaces are derived in a unique manner. New source terms are found for the FW-H equation which steam from second order generalized derivatives, whereas all terms with the mass flux vector cancel out due to symmetry conditions. This procedure is validated by the derivation of the same result from the Lighthill equation directly and a term-by-term comparison with the Kirchhoff formula. Finally, it is shown how terms, containing the curvature of the integration surface, appear in the final solutions. The role of the
Keywords
Introduction
The aeroacoustic analogy was initiated by Lighthill 1 in the 1950s and extended by Ffowcs Williams and Hawkings 2 in the late 1960s with the incoorporation of boundary conditions. At that time the computational resources were poor and an important outcome of the theory were the scaling laws for monopole-, dipole- and quadrupole noise sources. Throughout this paper the abbreviation FW-H equation is used for Ffowcs Williams and Hawkings equation.
Intensive use of the acoustic analogy emerged from the growing computational capabilities. Farassat and Brentner3–8 developed the foundations of propeller noise codes, based on mathematical theories of generalized functions. Thanks to Farassat, the power of these analytical tools became available not only to the mathematicians but also to the physicists and engineers. Together with Myers, Farassat derived the Kirchhoff formula9,10 for a moving surface in an elegant manner. Today the numerical codes are regarded as well established and are applied without the need to know the underlying assumptions and principles.
Regardless of the success of the acoustic analogy, the author performed a literature review and found some open points for discussion. - The derivation of the FW-H equation must start from the continuity and momentum equation. It fails, when the method is applied to the Lighthill equation directly.4,11 - Kirchhoff formula and FW-H equation are both based on generalized functions and the wave operator for a quiescent acoustic free field. The difference is only attributed to the Lighthill term, but even so a comparison of the source terms is unsatisfactory.
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- Farassat mentioned the effect of surface curvature, but an integral formulation for applications is missing. - The equations for the dipole noise source terms contain derivatives of the Dirac delta function restricted to the boundary surface. The equivalence to the dipole model as a distribution of two monopoles with opposite sign is not evident.
The application of generalized functions in physics comprises differential equations of first order. The propagation of shock waves is a well-known example. It is worth to mention, that in this case, the movement of the wave front is in straight lines along the normal of the surface with the speed of sound as a constant. In contrast, the imbedding procedure, used by Farassat and Myers 10 for the FW-H equation and the Kirchhoff formula, is of second order. The discontinuity is selected artificially, and the velocity of the surface is not restricted to the normal direction alone but can move in tangential direction as well.
This paper is an attempt to collect the most important requirements in a unified manner and to emphasize the underlying principles with mathematical rigor but understandable for engineers. Thereby, novel approaches are outlined to solve the open points mentioned above.
Generalized functions
The mathematical operation with discontinuous functions like the unit step function (Heaviside function) or impulse function (Dirac delta function) is still not standard. 12 But in many situations, it is the natural way of processing. Think of the initial condition of a vibrating string, which is excited by a hammer blow. Another example is the deflection of a string at a single point which results in a discontinuous slope of the string. In this work, the use of the Heaviside function is demonstrated by the generalized theorems of divergence, gradient and curl and the importance of the Dirac delta function is shown in conjunction with the approach of the fundamental solution or Green’s function.
Throughout the paper
A physical meaning for the Dirac delta function is only possible, when the integral with a continuous function is taken. The singular points of the discontinuous function can be resolved if the derivative operations are transferred to the continuous function. The continuous function is also called a regular function, whereas the discontinuous function is known as a singular function. In this paper, the Green’s function is understood as an example of a continuous function.
When the derivative is shifted from one function to the other function argument, the method of integration by parts is exploited. A peculiar principle in generalized function theory is the compactness assumption. At least one of the two involved functions must have bounded support and is zero outside the compact support region.
The boundary is outside the support, therefore the first term on the right vanishes and equation (2) can always be used.
This principle applies to temporal derivatives as well.
If the limits of the integral are inside the support region, a layer of sources is taken at the boundary. Let’s apply this concept in conjunction with the multidimensional Heaviside function.
The variable Cross-sectional view of a three-dimensional region, bounded by means of potential field 
The normal vector points in the direction of increasing
The derivative of the Heaviside function is the Dirac delta impulse.
For the gradient, the chain rule applies:
Note that this equation is valid in arbitrary dimension larger than
Equation (2) is now considered in multi-dimensional space
For
The function
Now the integration limits are adjusted to the volume on the left side and the enclosing boundary surface on the right side. When the normal vector is changed to point outwards, the negative sign will drop.
The same procedure can be performed for the divergence, time derivative and curl.
Divergence:
Equation (16) is the famous divergence theorem in three-dimensional space, and it was deduced without the need of a coordinate system. The singular functions are not part of the final equation, but they were used as the intrinsic tool to provide the transition from the
Here,
Time derivative:
It is supposed that the surface moves with velocity components
The key point here is that only the normal component of the surface velocity enters the equation, because the gradient of
In acoustic applications the moving surface may be assigned to a rotor blade or the wave front of a shock wave. For the latter case, the vector of the surface velocity has only one component along the normal direction with the speed of sound for all parts of the wave front.
With these preliminaries, we can proceed as with spatial derivatives.
The integration limits are adjusted to the volume on the left side and the enclosing boundary surface on the right side.
As before, the derivative is applied to the product of the two functions.
This equation is similar to the Reynold’s transport equation and can be used to demonstrate the conservation of a quantity. 17
Equation (22) in two-dimensional space reads
Curl:
The curl and cross product are not defined for higher dimensions. In two dimensions, the cross product can be regarded as a cross product with the unit normal of the plane. But the result depends on the choice to which side of the plane the normal vector points to. The curl and cross product can be given in tensor notation in three dimensions as follows
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:
The antisymmetric tensor of third order is the Levi-Civita symbol. In two dimensions the curl becomes a scalar.
The following identity for the triple product rule might be useful.
Scalar product and cross product commute due to the properties of the Levi-Civita symbol. Two permutations are needed to switch between the two equations.
So far, useful equations were derived by mathematical rigor, which are exploited below for the definition of generalized derivatives. The fundamental solution is a further example, where important conclusions are gained with the help of the Dirac delta function. It is repeated here to remind the reader of some important concepts.
Fundamental solution and free field Green’s function
The simplest model of a source is a point source, which location is given by the Dirac delta function.
If the equations are time dependent, an impulsive excitation at time
This monopole with source variables
When solution
Let’s assume the following solution
The symbol
If this equation is invoked in equation (33), the assumption of equation (34) is satisfied.
For a convolution, the differential operator
In acoustic applications, the operator
Before we proceed, the mathematical description of a monopole and dipole is reviewed. The interpretation of the acoustic sources in terms of point sources is of great importance for the physical understanding.
A monopole is equivalent to the free field Green’s function which is given in equation (36).
The speed of sound is denoted with
It is seen that the spectrum is continuous with unit magnitude for all circular frequencies
It was implicitly assumed that source time and observer time are equal, and the time shift is accomplished by the phase delay given by the exponent of the numerator for each frequency component. This equation represents a continuous spectrum. The Dirac delta function serves as a model to capture the behavior at all frequencies. For physical applications, only the frequencies of interest might be used. This is a further demonstration how the artificial Dirac delta function is exploited to derive physical relations. Additional information about Fourier transform and discontinuous functions can be found in Olver. 18
When the monopole is distributed over a surface
A dipole is the arrangement of two point sources. One point source is placed with amplitude
The two sources are separated by a distance
Nelson and Elliot
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applied a Taylor series expansion around
Equation (40) can be rewritten as follows.
The product of the distance
Ehrenfried
11
performed the limit by introducing the scaling factor
This scaling property is inherent to the Dirac delta function, compare with equation (9). Howe
20
thus defined the dipole field in terms of Dirac delta functions.
For dipoles distributed over a surface and with a dipole moment in normal direction, the equation of the double layer reads15,21
Generalized derivatives
Ffowcs Williams and Hawkings 2 were the first who introduced a data surface to propagate the acoustic field from that surface to the observer in the far field. The data surface discriminates the flow region from the acoustic region. The variables inside the flow region were set to the ones of a quiescent acoustic medium. This introduces an artifical discontinuity at the data surface. The method of integration by parts was used to find a differential equation. Nevertheless, the alternative procedure of generalized function technique was mentioned and even the final differential equation for the homogeneous wave equation was given but without derivation. 2
The generalized function method is now well established and is applied in two ways. Some authors prefer the windowing technique,11,22–24 where the variables are multiplied with the Heaviside function. Here the imbedding method of Farassat4,10 is adopted, where the usual derivative operators are extended to include singular functions with discontinuities.
The surface Data surface, left its definition in space, middle a discontinuity along the surface normal and right the abbreviation for the jump discontinuities.

The limit of the first derivative gives
It can be seen, that the following generalized derivative is the appropiate choice when operating with discontinous functions.
The bar over the operator indicates generalized derivation. The first term at the right is the regular part which is defined everywhere except at
This result can be easily extended to three dimensions.
The appearance of the normal vector in the singular part is an important property of the generalized derivative, when applied in higher dimensional space. This definition of equation (52) is linked to equation (15).
Differentiating with respect to
The derivation of definition (52) is processed with the following four steps. (1) The operation of interest is integrated with a test function (2) The Intergral is splitted in two parts (3) The operator is switched back from the test function to each volume part exploiting equation (15). (4) Finally, the test function appears as a factor in all terms and can be factored out to prove the assumption of equation (52)
The same procedure can be carried out for the divergence, curl and time derivative. In step (3) the suitable equations have to be taken that are equations (17), (26), and (23) respectively. The results are as follows for the
Divergence:
The higher order derivatives are likewise for spatial and temporal operators.
A tensor of second order was used instead of a scalar to mention the connection with the Lighthill stress tensor. The Laplacian is gained setting
The second terms after the last equal signs in equations (60)–(62) contain the factor
Likewise, the third terms are related to the derivatives of the Dirac-Delta functions. Note, that the normal vector appears through the inner derivative
The terms in the square brackets are the jumps of the amplitude and the jumps of the first derivative on the data surface. It is now instructive to analyze the relations between these quantities which are known as compatibility conditions of the surface.15,21,25–27 The analysis is based on the following symmetry conditions
The compatibility conditions are independent of the physical problem or the partial differential equations to be solved. Examining the first relation yields the identity
It is assumed in an initial step, that the variable
To simplify notations, the given shorthand notations are used.
The final equation for the case
The same reasoning applies to the mixed temporal and spatial derivatives. From equation (126) we obtain the relation
The terms with the round brackets in equation (68) can be expanded. The functions are restricted to the surface
The expansion of both terms in equation (68) gives the following identities.
It is worth to mention, that each equation (71) constitutes three relations, one for the regular part and two for the singular terms with
The terms in the brackets are replaced with the relations for the case
It is easily seen that the terms with
The equation states, that the jump of the spatial derivative can simply be decomposed into the normal component and the tangential components with respect to the surface or that the spatial derivatives are the same in the static ambient reference frame and the moving reference frame for the surface, see Morfey et al. 28 .
Accordingly for the terms with the normal vector, the equivalence in equation (73) is satisfied when
This equation states the transformation properties for the temporal derivative when changing between both reference systems. This becomes clear, when the term with the normal velocity is moved to the left side.
It is demonstrated that only the normal gradient and normal velocity are accounted for.24,28 The tangential velocity and the tangential gradients are ignored even when they exist. Grinfeld proposed to introduce a new operator
This expression for scalars with ambient index agrees with equation (76) as derived in this paper. The reference point on the surface might change the position on the surface over time, which is accounted for in the following expression.
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This makes the expression invariant to the actual used parameterization of the surface.
For covariant vectors, Grinfeld deduced the formula for vectors with respect to the moving surface
Variable
Furthermore, when comparing the terms with factor
These terms vanish when the surface is an acoustic wave front in a homogeneous medium or the surface performs a translation with a uniform velocity vector.
Wave equations
This section contains material which was already presented by the author at the aero acoustic workshop “Strömungsschall in Luftfahrt, Fahrzeug- und Anlagentechnik“, held 23th-24th of November 2022 at DLR in Brunswick, Germany.
The theory of generalized functions is applied to derive the FW-H equation in a new fashion from the Lighthill equation and to provide a useful comparison with the Kirchhoff formula.
To ease the reading, the following abbreviations are used for the aero acoustic quantities.
Both equations are combined to yield a wave equation for Position of data surface, discriminating the flow region from quiescent acoustic region.

The variables inside the surface, where
Performing the same steps as for the Lighthill equation before, the equation of mass continuity is modified using generalized derivatives throughout
This approach bears some new peculiarities, because the time derivative of the continuity equation is a generalized derivative as well as the divergence operation for the momentum equation. This is quite reasonable, since the third and sixth terms on the right side of both equations contain the surface fields with discontinuities. This was mentioned already by Farassat,4,7 but was not executed in full consequence. Once generalized derivatives are required, the second and fifth terms on the right sides appear as new terms. These terms stem from second order derivatives and are well established when applied in conjunction with the homogeneous wave equation, as was done for the Kirchhoff method.2,3,6,8,9
As mentioned before, generalized derivatives commute and all terms with
The combination of equations (85) and (86) gives the final result:
The third and fourth term constitute the usual volume term with the Lighthill tensor. Equation (88) is an important result of the paper. It represents a modified version of the FW-H equation. This is confirmed as follows by the derivation of the same result from the Lighthill equation directly and a term-by-term comparison with the Kirchhoff formula.
Starting the derivation from the Lighthill equation, the procedure is outlined here. All derivatives are taken as generalized derivatives. The second term is identical on both sides and the singular parts cancel each other. Therefore, only the regular derivative is utilized for both terms.
The other terms are expanded, shifting the terms for the regular wave equation to the left side and the others to the right side.
The result is identical to equation (88), thus both approaches are consistent. To the authors knowledge, this is the first time that this equivalence is shown. Farassat 4 tried to achieve this, but the final proof was left open.
Finally, the homogeneous wave equation is examined. The second order derivatives were already presented with equations (61) and (62). The Kirchhoff formula reads
This is almost identical to the new FW-H formulation. Exploiting the following simplification for the FW-H equation
The third and fourth terms cancel each other when
Both methods fulfill the purpose to propagate the acoustic field from the data surface to the observer position. In this part II of the domain, where
Integral formulation
To get the acoustic pressure at the observer position, the source terms must be integrated with the free field Green’s function over the data surface, see equation (34). All terms with the factor
It is demonstrated in this section that these
The integration with the Green’s function is given for time derivates and the usual vector operations divergence, gradient and curl. That makes the procedure applicable to more general situations, where the variable of interest is a vector rather than a scalar like the acoustic density.
In the following it is shown, how the source terms of the FW-H equation and the Kirchhoff formula can be reformulated in terms of monopole and dipole distributions.
For the divergence operator, as it appears in the last term of equation (88) and equation (91), we get
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Please note, that the auxiliary vector
In the first step in equation (94), the derivative was transferred from the source term to the Green’s function. Then
The Green’s function appears as a factor in equation (98) and can be factored out in all terms to yield the operational equation (99) for the divergence of a surface layer.
The operational equation is given as
Only the second term on the right side radiates as a dipole. It is seen as an abuse by the author, if the surface derivative is not shifted back from the Green’s function to the source terms as was done in the last step in equation (94). In case of the Kirchhoff formula, the tangential components
The gradient of a surface layer is a bit more challenging. It is necessary to follow the same steps as shown with the divergence operator. But we need to evaluate the surface divergence of a vector in three dimensions first.
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For the normal component, the product rule is applied. Taking the surface derivatives of the first factor, the scalar in the inner bracket, results in a tangential surface vector which gives no contribution, when the scalar product with the normal vector is performed. Only the derivative of the second factor contributes. The surface divergence of the normal vector is known to give the negative mean curvature
One can set the vector
The operational equation for the gradient of a surface layer is accordingly
For the time derivative of a surface distribution, an additional equation is required.
From equations (20) and (63) it is found
Further evaluation is performed on the last term.
After the first row, the derivative is taken away from the Dirac delta function to the other factors. Note that the gradient in normal direction of the scalars
Putting both equations together gives
The result for the operational time derivative of a surface layer is15,26
The derivation of the curl of a surface layer is beyond the scope of this paper. The relations of the equations (25) to (29) are exploited to give34,35
It is noted, that for all operators except the divergence, the mean surface curvature must be included. The curvature appears in case of the divergence operator as well, but here it occurs two times and both parts cancel out. This is demonstrated as follows applying the procedure given by Kanwal.
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So far, the first term depends on the surface curvature, but for the second term the derivative must be transferred to the other factors, resulting in two terms.
Acoustic analogy with mean flow
It was shown that a moving surface gives rise to the scalar
Alternatively, the translational movement of a rigid body can be replaced by the rigid body at rest, but within a medium of uniform mean flow velocity
To incorporate the uniform background flow into the partial differential equation, it is sufficient to replace the partial derivative with respect to time by the convective derivative and to adopt generalized derivatives
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The second and third term must cancel each other to proceed much like as before in equations (88) and (89). The equivalence can be shown my means of the compatibility conditions as given in the Appendix. The only difference is encountered by the first term, which is analyzed next.
The first term in equation (116) is processed in two steps.
The second step gives the following interesting result
The regular terms constitute the modified wave operator together with the Laplacian from equation (90) to give the inhomogeneous wave equation with uniform mean flow.
The new source terms, which replace the first and second term on the right of equation (90), are
However, the fourth and the last terms are an essential manifestation of a new source mechanism. The different formulation of the wave operator causes an adaptation of the source terms. The fourth term is of pure monopole type. The last term is evaluated as the gradient of a scalar surface distribution according to equation (104). The source is of monopole type and dipole type. The surface curvature contributes to the monopole part. Both terms, fourth and eighth, are supposed to be effective in the nose region of the rotor blade.
This is a powerful demonstration, where the suitable mathematical framework provides meaningful physical insight. In this novel approach the knowledge of the Green’s function is not required. The equivalence of the normal mean flow and the normal surface velocity might give a better understanding of the mathematical equations. The acoustic analogy models the acoustic wave propagation with suitable source terms. A numerical flow simulation provides the field quantities for the acoustic source terms as required by the acoustic analogy. The boundary condition of the flow field is accounted for by the flow simulation but not by the acoustic source terms. The acoustic source terms satisfy the acoustic boundary condition at the data surface.
Conclusions
This paper collects the most important foundations of the acoustic analogy in a unified treatment. The mathematical derivations are based on a few underlying principles, but are applied with mathematical rigor to ease the understanding for engineers. The FW-H equation is modified in a way that it can be derived from the Lighthill equation directly. The achieved term by term comparison with Kirchhoff formula might be helpful in the interpretation of results from acoustic predictions. Knowing the underlying assumptions of the acoustic analogy is seen as an essential requirement to deal with spurious noise and other limitations in engineering applications.
It was shown that the operators acting on surface discontinuities obey special mathematical rules. To distinguish these surface fields from other fields it is recommended to provide a unique notation like the square brackets [ ] as was done in this paper for such fields. It was demonstrated that the
The source distributions on the data surface represent virtual sources replacing the one in the flow field. It is important to note, that the free field Green’s function is used for these virtual sources. The acoustic radiation to the observer positions is performed in a free field with no flow and any physical surfaces are absent. The distribution of virtual sources accounts for reflections at physical surfaces in the flow region. Shifting the data surface away from physical surfaces is beneficial to comply with the assumptions of the theory. But an interpretation of the virtual sources is more realistic, if the data surface coincidences with a physical surface, for example the surface of an airfoil.
The nose region of the rotor blade is assumed to be an effective source area. This is supported by the occurrence of the extrema of the normal surface velocity
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Appendix
From the second order symmetry conditions of equation (64), the following compatibility conditions are given for scalar and vector quantities. This can be derived in the same manner as outlined in that previous section. Due to the vector quantities the indices with Greek letters are no more unique and therefore abandoned in this section. It is sufficient to denote surface derivatives with
relations are found for scalar quantities
From the mixed symmetry relation
the following compatibility conditions can be deduced
