Interaction of a Traveling Pressure Perturbation with a Boundary Layer

The interaction between a traveling pressure perturbation and a laminar compressible boundary layer is investigated for a perturbation level higher than that needed to initiate steady-state flow separation. It is found that if the velocity of the pressure perturbation is fairly high the flow may remain unseparated and its direction of motion determines the nature of the perturbation propagation in the boundary layer. It is shown that even in the linear approximation the perturbations are mainly induced by the linear wall layer and not by the critical layer, which always remains nonlinear. It is also found that in the unsteady case shortwave perturbation oscillations are damped with time while the longwave ones grow and that the growth of the perturbations with time amplifies their damping along the streamwise coordinate while damping reduces it.