Flight Research on Supersonic Laminar Flow

Some airfoil designs have been shown by theory and small-scale tests to be capable of passively maintaining laminar flow at super -sonic speeds. More recently, flight tests have proven that these designs can maintain large runs of laminar flow at higher Reynolds numbers in harsh flight environments. The flight tests were conducted for the purposes of observing laminar flow at speeds up to mach 2.0 and determining the conditions under which laminar flow breaks down.