The Air Force’s Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Boundary Layer Transition and Turbulence (BOLT II) project successfully launched today, helping NASA scientists gain flight data on the difficulties of hypersonic flight. As aircraft flies through the air, a thin layer of air forms around its surface and is dragged along with the vehicle. This is called the boundary layer, a very important element since most of the heating occurs here, along with a significant portion of the drag forces that try to slow down the vehicle.
BOLT II geometry has been regularly tested in one of Langley’s hypersonic facilities over the past few years inside their 20-inch Mach 6 Tunnel. This geometry was chosen based on its highly three-dimensional flow with swept leading edges, similar to a wave rider, which provides two distinct surfaces: one dedicated to smooth wall transition and the other to roughness effects.
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One of the trickiest hypersonic problems is predicting something called the boundary layer transition location. Boundary layers envelope all moving bodies and are defined by slip conditions of the individual air particles moving past the body. When turbulent, more of the frictional energy of the particles gets pulled down to the vehicle surface. This added energy to the wall can lead to excessive surface heating that make or break a vehicle design,” said Scott Berry, NASA principal investigator for the roughness experiment for BOLT II.
