Turbulent Boundary Layer of Space-Flight Vehicle

Abstract

The turbulent boundary layer (TBL) is an important aerodynamic environment for major portions of a space-vehicle structure. For most launch vehicles, the period of large dynamic pressure, and hence strong TBL excitation, coincides with supersonic flight. This implies high-speed convection of the pressure-field speeds generally in excess of the bending-wave speed on the structure. New procedures for calculating the response of cylindrical structures to a high-speed TBL have recently been developed at BBN. These procedures require information concerning the TBL pressure spectrum that can, in part, be related to flight data obtained from flush-mounted microphones. The use of these flight data for response estimation is the topic of this paper.