Subsonic flow about a thin profile subjected to external actions

Abstract

A physical model and an analytical procedure for calculating the parameters of a subsonic inviscid flow about a thin profile at a small angle of attack are developed under the conditions that the flow is subjected to external actions from a thin surface layer of the profile. The actions may be force (say, magnetohy-drodynamic) actions and energy actions (e.g., due to plasma objects). To the first approximation of the small perturbation theory, an analytical solution for the 2D velocity potential is derived for an arbitrary shape of the profile. It is shown that if the thickness of the acting layer is much smaller than the length of the profile, the external actions can be simulated by replacing the real profile with some “effective” one. The shape of the latter depends on the spatial distribution of the external actions and on the shape of the real profile. Data obtained here can be used to optimize the aerodynamic flow about a thin profile, specifically, through the influence of an external inviscid flow on the flow in a boundary layer.