LOW DRAG BOUNDARY LAYER SUCTION EXPERIMENTS IN FLIGHT ON A WING GLOVE OF AN F-94A AIRPLANE WITH SUCTION THROUGH A LARGE NUMBER OF FINE SLOTS

Publisher Summary This chapter presents some low-drag boundary layer suction experiments in flight on a wing glove of an F-94A airplane with suction through a large number of fine slots. It also illustrates a F-94 glove section with suction applied through 69 fine slots located from 0.41 c to 0.95 c and with suction through 81 slots from 0.08 c to 0.95 c. To avoid turbulent flow in the test region, the slots were located within an area enclosed on both sides by the turbulent wedges originating from the junctures of the wing leading edge with the glove section. The F-94 flight experiments with low-drag BLC verified full-chord laminar flow by means of boundary layer suction at considerably higher Reynolds numbers than in low turbulence tunnels, confirming the results of transition experiments on a smooth laminar flow wing of a King Cobra fighter airplane, according to which the atmospheric turbulence has less influence on transition than the microscale turbulence of low-turbulence tunnels.