Use of a Colored Water Surface Flow Visualization Technique in a Supersonic Wind Tunnel to Investigate Cavity Flow Fields

A surface flow visualization technique was developed that uses colored water as a medium to visualize surface flows over wind tunnel models at supersonic speeds. Wind tunnel tests were conducted with this technique used to visualize surface flows in a rectangular box cavity that was mounted in a flat plate at Mach numbers of 1.50 and 2.16. The results showed that this technique was effective in visualizing the surface flows in the cavity and has produced a unique set of data that has increased the understanding of complex unsteady three-dimensional cavity flow fields.