Roughness receptivity studies in a 3-D boundary layer – Flight tests and computations

Abstract

The receptivity of 3-D boundary layers to micron-sized, spanwise-periodic Discrete Roughness Elements (DREs) was studied. The DREs were applied to the leading edge of a 30-degree swept-wing at the wavelength of the most unstable disturbance. In this case, calibrated, multi-element hotfilm sensors were used to measure disturbance wall shear stress. The roughness height was varied from 0 to 50 microns. Thus, the disturbance-shear-stress amplitude variations were determined as a function of modulated DRE heights. The computational work was conducted parallel to the flight experiments. The complete viscous flowfield over the O-2 aircraft with the SWIFT model mounted on the port wing store pylon was successfully modeled and validated with the flight data. This highly accurate basic-state solution was incorporated into linear stability calculations and the wave growth associated with the crossflow instability was calculated.