Final Design of the Boundary Layer Transition (BOLT) Flight Experiment

To improve scientific knowledge of boundary-layer transition physics on increasingly complex geometries, the Air Force Research Laboratory/Air Force Office of Scientific Research has sponsored the Boundary Layer Transition (BOLT) Experiment to obtain measurements of hypersonic boundary-layer transition in flight on a low-curvature concave surface with highly swept leading edges. This paper will summarize the completed design of the BOLT flight experiment. The final selection and layout of the flight scientific instrumentation was driven by extensive ground testing and numerical analyses. The complex flight experiment hardware was designed with over 344 scientific measurements to characterize transition in flight, and to provide a new validation dataset for the development of next-generation transition prediction methods.