Skin friction measurements using He-Ne laser

Abstract

An experimental study of the skin friction measurement in a turbulent boundary-layer has been carried out. The skin friction measurements are made using the laser interferometer skin friction (LISF) meter, which optically detects the rate of thinning of an oil applied to the test surface. This technique produces reliable skin friction data over a wide range of flow situations up to 3-dimensional complicated flows with separation, where traditional skin friction measurement techniques are not applicable. The present measured data in a turbulent boundary-layer on a flat plate using the LISF technique shows a good comparison with the result from the previous velocity profile techniques, which proves the validity of the present technique. An extensive error analysis is carried out for the present technique yielding an uncertainty of about .+-.8%, which makes them suitable for CFD code validation purposes. Finally the measurements of the skin friction in a separated region after a surface-mounted obstacle are also presented.