A Critical Review of Existing Methods of Calculating the Turbulent Boundary Layer

Abstract

Existing methods of calculating the incompressible turbulent boundary layer have been critically examined and the results that they give compared with a large amount of published experimental data. The investigation has shown that different methods of calculating shape-factor development give, in general, widely different results and are in some cases very inaccurate. Head's entrainment equation proved generally the most satisfactory. It was also found that the measured growth of momentum thickness usually disagreed with the predictions of the two-dimensional momentum integral equation, even far from separation, indicating the presence of substantial three-dimensional effects. However, no overall improvement in agreement with experiment could be obtained by using the quadrature formulae proposed by various authors.