A Study Of Surface Pressure Fluctuations In Hypersonic Turbulent Boundary Layers

Measurements were obtained of the pressure fluctuations on a solid surface immersed in a supersonic stream for Mach numbers up to 5.0. The pressures resulting from both the attached and separated turbulent boundary layers were investigated. The results for the attached layer show that the root mean square value of the pressure fluctuation is proportional to the mean shear stress at the wall with a proportionality constant that is only weakly dependent on Mach number. The convection velocity characterizing the space-time correlations of pressure on the wall decreases with increasing Mach number, as does the ratio of the scale of the pressure fluctuations to the geometrical boundary layer thickness. The pressures associated with the separated flow produced by a forward facing step were significantly larger than the pressures produced by an attached boundary layer. The data can be interpreted as showing that the pressure fluctuations originate from two distinct causes, fluctuations due to changes in geometry of the separated region and fluctuations due to the disturbed motion within the separation bubble. (Author).