Theoretical And Experimental Studies Of The Shock Wave Boundary Layer Interaction On Curved Compression Surfaces

The paper describes a study of attached and separated laminar boundary layers over highly cooled, curved compression surfaces in a hypersonic airflow. In the theoretical study, the integral forms of the boundary layer equations for the conservation of mass, streamwise momentum, normal momentum, moment of streamwise momentum and energy were used to describe the development of attached and separated boundary layers on a curved surface. In the experimental study, skin friction, heat transfer and pressure measurements were made on a series of flat plate-cylindrical arc-wedge compression surfaces. It was found that separation first occurred on the compression surface downstream of the flat plate, and incipient separation could not always be detected by observing the first occurrence of an inflexion point in the pressure distribution. (Author).