This paper reports an experimental investigation into the stagnation bubbles found in the shock layers of some supersonic jets impinging on perpendicular flat plates at small nozzle-to-plate distances. The experiments used twelve contoured nozzles within the Mach number range 1.42 to 2.83. Surface pressures were measured on the plate and free-jet pitot pressure distributions were obtained at the level of the centre of the plate shock. Schlieren pictures were taken of both impinging and free jets. It was found that the bubbles result from the interaction of the plate shock with very weak shock waves which are produced in the jet either by small imperfections in the nozzle wall or by slight inaccuracies in the design or production of the nozzle contour. The bubbles can be eliminated by suitable improvements to the nozzle. Other anomalous flows produced by shock interactions are described and explanations offered. It is shown that the bubbles sometimes encountered at close plate spacings with conical nozzles are also due to shock waves. However, for wide-angled nozzles, internal shocks can be an inherent part of the flow from the nozzle and the bubbles which they produce are thus an inherent part of the impingement flow. From physical arguments concerning the main factors involved in producing a bubble, a parameter is constructed whose values are shown to be a good criterion for whether a bubble occurs or not.

A method of predicting body drag in subcritical axisymmetric flow is outlined which requires only detailed body shape, free-stream conditions and transition point to be prescribed. Results of calculations for a range of body shapes are shown essentially to confirm information in Royal Aeronautical Society Data Sheets but clearly demonstrate that fineness ratio alone is not sufficient to characterise body shape. For example, at a fixed fineness ratio of 0.18, detailed changes in body contour are shown to produce 10 per cent changes in drag coefficient.

The non-linear boundary-value problem resulting from an analysis of the stresses and deflections of an annular membrane is transformed into an initial-value problem, replacing the iterative and series methods of Pifko and Goldberg. A general solution valid for the complete range of values of the ratio of inner and outer radii is obtained and tabulated by this non-iterative method.

An approximate analytical method is presented for determining the swirling compressible flow through a nozzle. The method is developed from the techniques introduced by Carpenter and Johannesen. It is perfectly general in that the swirl distribution need not be specified a priori but the radial gradients of the stagnation enthalpy and entropy are assumed to be small. The principal assumption is that changes in the nozzle cross-sectional area are sufficiently gradual and smooth for the radial velocity component to be neglected at each section, i e the usual assumption of one-dimensional compressible flow theory. Analytical expressions are derived for various flow characteristics, e g mass-flux coefficient, impulse function and back-pressure ratio required for choking. The analytical results are compared to numerical results for two main classes of swirling flows. On the whole the analytical results are found to be good approximations for moderate swirl levels. The approximate numerical method is found to be reasonably successful at predicting flow reversal at the nozzle wall. The main result is that a swirl parameter is found such that, with the sole exception of the free-vortex case, the mass-flux-coefficient data for all swirling flows investigated collapse onto a single curve.

In an axisymmetric turbulent boundary layer along a circular cylinder at constant pressure, measurements have been made of mean velocity profile and turbulence characteristics: longitudinal velocity fluctuations, Reynolds shear stress, transverse correlation and spectrum. It has been found that the qualitative behaviour of an axisymmetric turbulent boundary layer is similar to that of a two-dimensional boundary layer in the wall region, where as in the outer region the effects of transverse curvature are observed.

The velocity and pressure distributions in a flow generated by a thick air jet that throttles a confined airstream have been studied analytically and experimentally. Velocity and pressure measurements were made in a duct with a rectangular cross section of 102 mm height and 19 mm depth, through which air flowed at velocities ranging from 65 to 80 m/s. The airstream was throttled by a thick air jet having velocities ranging from 130 to 150 m/s that entered the mainstream at angles ranging from 60° to 135°. The jet-mainstream contour was found to be elliptical and agreement within six per cent was obtained between the theoretically and experimentally determined maximum height of the contour. Jet spreading was found to be linear. The theory permits determination of the velocity profile in the jet and gives velocities that deviate less than ten per cent from values obtained experimentally.