Laminar flow control research at TsAGI: Past and present

This paper presents a brief review of activities in laminar flow control being performed at the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute named after Prof. N.E. Zhukovsky (TsAGI). These efforts are focused on the improvement of the existing laminar flow control methods and on the development of new ones. The investigations have demonstrated the effectiveness of aircraft surface laminarization applications with the aim of friction drag reduction. The opportunity of considerable delaying of laminar-turbulent transition due to special wing profile geometry and using boundary layer suction and surface cooling has been verified at sub- and supersonic speeds through various wind tunnel testing at TsAGI and during flying laboratory experiments at the Flight Research Institute (LII). The investigations on using hybrid laminar flow control systems for friction drag reduction were also carried out. New techniques of laminar flow control were proposed, in particular, the method of local heating of the wing leading edge, boundary layer laminarization by means of receptivity control, and electrohydrodynamic methods of boundary layer stability control. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.