Abstract Luke Edwards

Title: Receptivity of Hypersonic Boundary Layers to Kinetic Fluctuations

Abstract: In aerodynamics, the boundary layer is a thin region of flow immediately adjacent to a body, outside of which viscous effects are often negligible. A critical feature of this thin region is its tendency to exhibit spatially localized transition from laminar flow to turbulence, a phenomenon which is not well understood despite its importance in a wide range of applications. Our work is motivated by the need to predict the location of this transition in the flow over the body of hypersonic aircraft. In recent years, it has been proposed that kinetic fluctuations, or thermal noise, could play a role in the onset of turbulence for certain flight conditions. In this talk, we introduce an approach for computing the magnitude of disturbances induced by kinetic fluctuations in high-speed, compressible boundary layer flows. We also discuss ongoing work towards overcoming mathematical difficulties that arise in estimating disturbance magnitudes in certain interesting cases.