Investigation of Flat-Plate Hypersonic, Turbulent Boundary Layers With Heat Transfer

Abstract

Naturally turbulent boundary layers on a cooled flat plate have been investigated at several distances from the leading edge of the plate at a Mach number of 5.2 for three rates of steady-state heat transfer to the surface. Measurements of Pitot and static pressures and of total and wall temperatures made it possible to compute velocity profiles, static-temperature profiles, and boundary-layer parameters without resorting to assumptions. The data demonstrate that the Reynolds analogy between skin friction and heat transfer is valid for all conditions of the present experiments. With increasing rate of heat transfer to the surface, the skin-friction coefficient was found to decrease, a phenomenon opposite to that predicted by theories and empirical relations. On the basis of the present data and other published results of compressible and incompressible turbulent boundary-layer skin friction, a simple relation was devised which describes closely the variation of the skin-friction coefficient with Mach number, heat-transfer rate, and momentum-thickness Reynolds number.