Regarding the flow separation and BL and Lift production

Several misconceptions about boundary-layer separation have been expressed in recent posts. I'll deal with them here in generic terms because I don't want to search this voluminous discussion for specific names and quotes. 1) Misconception: If you increase the Reynolds number by increasing the freestream velocity, the flow has more energy to overcome the adverse pressure gradient and thus resists separation longer. Correction: As freestream velocity increases, the pressure differences, and thus the pressure gradients, increase as the square of the velocity, exactly offsetting the increase in kinetic energy of the flow. So this is not a contributor to the Reynolds-number dependence of separation. 2) Misconception: As Reynolds number is reduced, the boundary layer becomes less energetic, is less able to overcome an adverse pressure gradient, and separates earlier. Correction: This is not true for a laminar boundary layer, and besides, flow energy isn't the primary reason for differences in separation resistance in general. For laminar flow, assuming the C_p distribution along the surface remains the same, and the boundary-layer development starts at a stagnation point as it does on an airfoil with a rounded leading edge, the separation location is independent of Reynolds number. The reason is explained in section 4.2 of White's Viscous Fluid Flow and in section 4.2.1 my book. For a turbulent boundary layer, the dependence of separation on Reynolds number isn't really an energy effect, but a turbulent-shear-stress effect, which is the next item. 3) Misconception: A turbulent boundary layer resists separation better than a laminar boundary layer because it is "more energetic". Correction: For a given upstream pressure history, provided both flows are still attached, a turbulent boundary layer has less energy than a laminar boundary layer, i.e. the turbulent boundary layer's energy thickness is greater, as are all the other measures of boundary-layer thickness. So the greater separation resistance of turbulent flow isn't due to higher energy. Instead, it has to do with what goes on at the bottom of the boundary layer. When a boundary layer encounters an adverse pressure gradient, it automatically develops a region adjacent to the wall with positive tau_y (underscore denotes partial differentiation). The shear-stress gradient tau_y is the net streamwise viscous force per unit volume on a fluid parcel, and positive tau_y means that the net viscous force is actually pulling fluid along in the flow direction, not retarding it. So the only reason in general that a boundary layer can resist separation for any distance at all into an adverse pressure gradient is that it develops this region of favorable tau_y near the wall, while tau_y through the rest of the boundary-layer thickness is retarding the flow. At the surface itself, the velocity goes to zero (the no-slip condition), so the fluid acceleration is also zero there. The momentum equation reduces to the statement that the two streamwise forces on a fluid parcel on the surface must be in balance, i.e. tau_y = p_x. Thus at the surface itself the value of tau-y is dictated by p_x, whether the flow is laminar or turbulent. The key to the difference in separation

resistance is in how rapidly tau_y decreases away from the surface. In a laminar boundary layer, the favorable tau_y comes only from the shape of the velocity profile, i.e. from the positive second derivative of the velocity with respect to y, which tends to decrease rapidly away from the wall. In a turbulent boundary layer, the region of positive second derivative is limited to the very thin viscous sublayer , which typically isn't even visible in a plot of the velocity profile. But the favorable tau_y persists farther from the wall than it does in laminar flow because the eddy viscosity increases rapidly with distance from the wall outside the viscous sublayer. The large eddy-viscosity gradient maintains a much more powerful positive-tau_y effect than a laminar profile can generate, and the eddy-viscosity gradient increases with increasing Reynolds number, which is why turbulent separation depends on Reynolds number, while laminar separation doesn't. ************************************************************************************* In the previous post I explained the separation resistance of a boundary layer in terms of a favorable viscous force, or favorable tau_y effect, and explained how this effect is much stronger in turbulent flow than in laminar flow. One might think that this favorable viscous effect supports the belief by Paul S. and others that without viscosity the flow would tend to separate near the airfoil crest. But that would be a mistake.

Real-world viscous flows satisfy the no-slip condition in which the velocity past a stationary wall goes to practically zero at the surface (theoretical calculations assume exactly zero). The flow at the surface doesn't have the energy to overcome any adverse pressure gradient, and would separate at the onset of the gradient if it weren't for the favorable tau_y effect. However, the situation in an inviscid flow, if there were such a thing, would be completely different. The no-slip condition is incompatible with inviscid flow. If you impose the no-slip condition on the inviscid-flow equations, the only possible solution is the trivial one with zero velocity everywhere. So in any flow of an inviscid fluid, the flow must be assumed to slide along the surface unimpeded, with no energy loss. In steady flow, the fluid can persevere into an adverse pressure gradient all the way to a stagnation point, and that's what it does in potential-flow solutions. No favorable viscous effect is needed, and there is no tendency to separate near the airfoil crest (For ordinary airfoil shapes in the ordinary range of positive angle of attack, the zero-circulation potential-flow solution separates at a stagnation point forward of the trailing edge but well aft of the crest).

Paul S's current contention is that viscosity is necessary to prevent a flow pattern that separates near the airfoil crest. I think my argument above shows that there is no basis in the physics for this. And why should the airfoil crest be the place it would tend to separate? The flow approaching the crest has already been turned away from the freestream direction (by the pressure field) as it approached the leading edge, and then turned back toward the freestream direction as it flowed along the convex surface of the forward part of the airfoil, so with regard to Newton's first law, what would be special about the freestream direction? And if Paul S's interpretation of the physics were correct, why wouldn't

the flow go off on a tangent near the leading edge, where both the velocity and the convex curvature are often the greatest?

No, the primary effect of viscosity in ordinary unstalled airfoil flows is to fix separation at the trailing edge. Viscosity plays no essential role in enabling flow to follow curved surfaces. ************************************************************************************* Stanley R. Taylor's summary statement "Air goes down, wing goes up. (Newton's Third Law)" stretches Newton's third law far beyond what it actually says. This is a common mistake that arises from the way Newton used the word "action" (actually a Latin word that has been translated as "action"). Many popular explanations of aerodynamic lift and rocket propulsion mistakenly take the word "action" in its general sense and treat the motion of the air or the exhaust gas as an "action" that is subject to Newton's third law. But that's not consistent with what Newton meant by "action".

In Newton's third law, the word "action" is used in a very limited sense and refers only to a force, not to any motion that occurs in response to the force. When applied to an airfoil, the third law states only that the force exerted by the airfoil on the air is equal-and-opposite to the force exerted by the air on the airfoil. This doesn't really explain anything about lift because the third law by itself says nothing about how the air responds to the force. When the "air goes down" in response to the downward force exerted on it by the airfoil, that response is the subject of Newton's second law (F = ma). So explaining lift requires Newton's second law, not just the third. The same goes for rocket propulsion ************************************************************************************* First, contrary to the contention in some popular explanations, it simply isn't true that "air sticks to the wing due to viscosity". While air does obey (approximately) a no-slip condition at the surface, viscosity and the no-slip condition are separate bits of physics: Viscosity is a result of gas molecules interacting with each other, while the no-slip condition is a result of gas molecules interacting with the solid surface and each other. If you could make the solid surface from a material (call it nonexistium) in which the atoms were orders of magnitude smaller than gas molecules, and you smoothed the surface sufficiently, the gas molecules would bounce specularly off the surface. Viewed as a continuum, the gas would effectively slide along the surface, and there would be no shearing and no formation of a viscous boundary layer, in spite of the viscosity of the gas.

But the no-slip condition is a side issue because it doesn't contribute directly to the flow's ability to follow the curved surface anyway, as I've explained in several earlier posts. In an airfoil flowfield in general, air follows curved paths through an essentially inviscid mutual interaction between the pressure field and the velocity field, in accordance with Newton's second law in a vector sense.

Following a curved path constitutes an acceleration in the direction perpendicular to the flow (a centripetal accelaration), and according to Newton's second law that acceleration requires a force. In an airfoil flowfield, that force is supplied by the pressure gradient. So the pressure gradient is the direct cause of the flow curvature. To say that some layers of air bend because "airstreams don't leave voids" doesn't get at the direct physical cause of the flow curvature. The direct physical cause of all changes of flow direction in the field is the pressure gradient. That's why a satisfactory explanation of lift requires describing the pressure field around the airfoil, and describing how the vector accelerations of the air are both caused by the pressure field and support the pressure field in a mutual interaction.