Fifty Years of Shock-Wave/Boundary-Layer Interaction Research: What Next?

Because of their ubiquitous presence in high-speed flight and their impact on vehicle and component performance, shock-wave/boundary-layer interactions have been studied for about 50 years. Despite truly remarkable progress in computational and measurement capabilities, there are still important quantities that cannot be predicted very accurately, that is, peak heating in strong interactions, or cannot be predicted at all, that is, unsteady pressure loads. There remain observations that cannot be satisfactorily explained and physical processes that are not well understood. Much work remains to be done. Based on the author's own views and those of colleagues, some suggestions are made as to where future efforts might be focused. Just as the first workers in the field could not have foreseen the capabilities generated by the computer/instrumentation revolution of the past 20 years, it is probably fair to assume that the extent of our vision and imagination in the year 2000 is equally limited. New simulation and measurement techniques will doubtlessly become available in the next 10 or 20 years, the results from which will render many of the current concerns moot