Patent attributes
The outer skin (100) of an aerodynamic body (40) has perforations (200) arranged in particular patterns in respective spanwise extending groups or bundles (250). Each perforation is preferably a micro-slot with a length of 100 to 3000 μm and a width of 50 to 250 μm. Air is sucked through the micro-slots from the boundary layer flowing over the outer skin, to achieve boundary layer control. In each bundle, the pattern, size, orientation, and other parameters of the micro-slots are designed to achieve mutual destructive interference of flow disturbances arising due to the suction, to minimize the excitation of flow instabilities in the boundary layer. Particularly, the spatial spectrum of the perforation pattern of a given bundle is essentially absent of significant energy at predetermined wavelengths of predetermined flow instabilities that otherwise appear in the boundary layer air flow. The aerodynamic body further includes supporting ribs (300) extending parallel to the perforation bundles (250) and a perforated inner plate (400) providing a throttling control of the suction flow through groups of the bundles.
