Unsteady pressure measurements on a supercritical airfoil at high Reynolds numbers

Abstract

Steady and unsteady pressures were measured on a 14 percent supercritical airfoil at transonic Mach numbers at Reynolds numbers from 6,000,000 to 35,000,000. Instrumentation techniques were developed to measure unsteady pressures in a cryogenic tunnel at flight Reynolds numbers. Experimental steady data, corrected for wall effects show very good agreement with calculations from a full potential code with an interacted boundary layer. The steady and unsteady pressures both show a shock position that is dependent on Reynolds number. For a supercritical pressure distribution at a chord Reynolds number of 35,000,000 laminar flow was observed between the leading edge and the shock wave at 45 percent chord