Boundary Layer Transition Determination for Periodic and Static Flows using Phase-Averaged Pressure Data

A method of boundary layer transition measurement is presented for wind tunnel models instrumented with surface pressure taps. The measurement relies on taking a number of theoretically identical measurements at different times and then analysing the standard deviation of the pressures. Due to the slight unsteady movement of the transition position, a peak in the standard deviation of pressure σCPpeak is found at the transition position, and this is correlated with measurements of the transition position with an infrared camera and hot film anemometers. In contrast to microphone measurements, it is shown that the transition detection works for data which has been low-pass filtered with a cutoff of 1 Hz. The application to static and dynamic transition measurements on static and periodically pitching helicopter rotor blade airfoils at Mach 0.3-0.5 is demonstrated.