Book Description

A previous study on the effect of surface roughness on the turbulent boundary layer, using a Fortran code, ITRACT, solved for the characteristics of a laminar, transitional and turbulent boundary layer on smooth surfaces. The present study investigates the influence of surface roughness on a compressible turbulent boundary layer and then extends the usefulness of ITRACT by including in it the optional capability of rough-surface boundary-layer calculations. Surface roughness was represented by distributed sources and sinks in the appropriate governing equations. The most important term is a sink term in the mean momentum equation, representing the form drag due to the roughness element. Governing boundary-layer equations for continuity, momentum, and energy were derived in a form to account for blockage effects due to roughness elements. The modified governing equations were then transformed using Probstein-Elliott and Levy-Lees transformations. The resulting equations, with appropriate boundary conditions, were solved by finite-difference techniques to determine the nondimensional velocity components and temperature at a finite number of nodes in the boundary-layer flow field.