Decreasing the Side Wall Contamination in Wind Tunnels

Abstract

To study boundary layers in the transitional Reynolds number regime, the useful spanwise and streamwise extent of wind tunnels is often limited by turbulent fluid emanating from the side walls. Some or all of the turbulent fluid can be removed by sucking fluid out at the corners, as suggested by Amini [1]. It is shown that by optimizing the suction slot width, the side wall contamination can be dramatically decreased without a concomitant three-dimensional distortion of the laminar boundary layer.