The coupling between flow instabilities and incident disturbances at a leading edge

Abstract

It is now generally agreed that an external disturbance field, such as an incident acoustic wave, can effectively couple to instabilities of a flow past a trailing edge. One purpose of the present paper is to show that there are situations where a similar coupling can occur at a leading edge. The process is analysed and the effects of experimentally controllable parameters are assessed. It is important to account for such phenomena when evaluating the effect of external disturbances on transition.