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The layer of air over the wing's surface that is slowed down or stopped by viscosity, is the boundary layer. There are two different types of boundary layer flow: laminar and turbulent. [1] Laminar boundary layer flow. The laminar boundary is a very smooth flow, while the turbulent boundary layer contains swirls or "eddies."
The boundary layer thickness, , is the distance normal to the wall to a point where the flow velocity has essentially reached the 'asymptotic' velocity, .Prior to the development of the Moment Method, the lack of an obvious method of defining the boundary layer thickness led much of the flow community in the later half of the 1900s to adopt the location , denoted as and given by
The path from receptivity to laminar-turbulent transition as illustrated by Morkovin, 1994 [2] A boundary layer can transition to turbulence through a number of paths. Which path is realized physically depends on the initial conditions such as initial disturbance amplitude and surface roughness.
A boundary layer exists whenever there is relative movement between a fluid and a solid surface with viscous forces present in the layer of fluid close to the surface. The flow can be externally, around a body, or internally, in an enclosed passage. Boundary layers can be either laminar or turbulent.
This turbulent boundary layer thickness formula assumes 1) the flow is turbulent right from the start of the boundary layer and 2) the turbulent boundary layer behaves in a geometrically similar manner (i.e. the velocity profiles are geometrically similar along the flow in the x-direction, differing only by stretching factors in and (,) [5 ...
Because air has viscosity, this layer of air tends to adhere to the wing. As the wing moves forward through the air, the boundary layer at first flows smoothly over the streamlined shape of the airfoil. Here, the flow is laminar and the boundary layer is a laminar layer. Prandtl applied the concept of the laminar boundary layer to airfoils in 1904.
With respect to laminar and turbulent flow regimes: laminar flow occurs at low Reynolds numbers, where viscous forces are dominant, and is characterized by smooth, constant fluid motion; turbulent flow occurs at high Reynolds numbers and is dominated by inertial forces, which tend to produce chaotic eddies, vortices and other flow instabilities.
Turbulent flow has a fluctuating and irregular pattern of flow which is made obvious by the formation of vortices. While the turbulent layer grows, the laminar layer thickness decreases. This results in a thinner laminar boundary layer which, relative to laminar flow, depreciates the magnitude of friction force as fluid flows over the object.