Investigation of the heat transfer mechanism in supersonic turbulent boundary layers

A method is described for calculating turbulent Prandtl numbers from Mach number and total temperature profiles in supersonic boundary layers. The calculations are based on boundary layer measurements in the Mach number range from 3.5 to 5. The investigations clearly indicate that in addition to accurate profile measurements reliable values of shear stress and heat flux at the wall must exist, in order to be able to calculate the turbulent Prandtl number in the viscous regime of the boundary layer. For flow conditions with and without heat transfer, the derived turbulent Prandtl numbers indicate that the turbulent transport of heat decreases much faster towards the wall than the turbulent transport of momentum. The results of the analysis show that only the unequivocal qualitative result of increasing turbulent Prandtl numbers in the viscous region of the boundary layer, can be expected. The variation of the turbulent Prandtl number can be described successfully using a simple approximation, based on the mixing length concept, and is applied to the calculation of total temperature distribution using the law of the wall for compressible flow.