University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics Seminar Series: Discrete Roughness Boundary-Layer Transition at Hypersonic Conditions

Boundary layer transition at hypersonic conditions is a critical design concern for all future high-speed missions and vehicles.  As part of the vehicle design process, accurate methods are needed to predict transition behavior in flight, in order to correctly model the aerothermodynamic environments used to size a hypersonic vehicle’s thermal protections system.  In almost every case, transition has been a surface roughness dominated problem in flight.  Transition correlations of wind tunnel derived discrete roughness behavior have been shown to accurately reflect flight performance.  A review will be provided of the authors experience with various roughness dominated wind tunnel studies over the years that led to developing a useable wind tunnel correlation that was successfully applied to flight.

RSVP by 5:00 PM on October 24, 2022.

Scott Berry has over thirty years of experience at NASA Langley Research Center with the application of state-of-the-art wind tunnel test techniques for aeroheating assessment of advanced hypersonic airbreathing, space transportation, and planetary entry vehicles.  His breadth of knowledge includes aerodynamic and fluid dynamic phenomena, heat-transfer theory, and high temperature gas dynamics, with primary research topics of hypersonic aerothermodynamics and boundary layer transition.  Scott has supported numerous high-profile agency programs, such as the Shuttle, National Aero Space Plane (NASP), X-33, X-34, X-37, X-38, and X-43 (Hyper-X).