Combined influence of coating permeability and roughness on supersonic boundary layer stability and transition

Abstract

A joint theoretical and experimental investigation of the influence of the surface permeability and roughness on the stability and laminar–turbulent transition of a supersonic flat-plate boundary layer at a free-stream Mach number of $M_{\infty }=2$ has been performed. Good quantitative agreement of the experimental data obtained with artificially generated disturbances performed on models with various porous inserts and calculations based on linear stability theory has been achieved. An increase of the pore size and porous-coating thickness leads to a boundary layer destabilization that accelerates the laminar–turbulent transition. It is shown that as a certain (critical) roughness value is reached, with an increase in the thickness of the rough and porous coating, the boundary layer stability diminishes and the laminar–turbulent transition is displaced towards the leading edge of the model.