Experimental Investigation of Roughness Effects on Transition on Blunt Spherical Capsule Shapes

Abstract: The present contribution reviews recent experimental results of roughness effects on boundary layer transition on capsule geometries with spherical windward geometries. Experiments in three wind tunnel facilities are considered. The ACE Tunnel of Texas AM University, USA, provided Mach 6 experiments with distributed roughness at relatively low Reynolds numbers, 2.5 · 10(exp 5) < Re(sub d) < 5 · 10(exp 5), with d denoting the capsule diameter. The observed boundary layer transition compared we...