Pressure-gradient effects on hypersonic turbulent skin friction and boundary-layer profiles.

Local skin friction, total-temperature profiles, and pitot-pressure profiles were measured on the wall of a Mach-7.4 wind tunnel. The wall to adiabatic wall temperature ratio was varied from 0.3 to 0.5. Boundary-layer characteristics were compared with those predicted by a finite-difference method. Local skin friction was predicted to within 15%. Pressure-gradient effects on the temperature and Mach number distributions and the shape factor (displacement thickness/momentum thickness) were underpredicted, but the velocity distributions were closely predicted.