A combination of visual and quantitative measurements is presented, providing a physical picture of the turbulent boundary layer flow structure on a flat plate. The flow structure is shown to consist of three zones, each zone has a one to one correspondence to the well known regions of the u+, y+ mean velocity profile. A wall layer region is shown to exist below y+ = 10. An apparently fully turbulent region exists corresponding to the logarithmic ''law of the wall'' and the ''buffer'' region. An intermittent zone appears to agree closely with the ''wake'' deviation region. An entirely new result of the investigation is the delineation of the structure of the wall layer region. This region is shown to contain a relatively regular structure of low and high velocity fluid streaks alternating in the span direction, together with the ejection of low momentum fluid into the outer flow. Correlations are given for the rate of ejection and the streak spacing. A qualitative description of other features of the wall layer region and the character of the remainder of the boundary layer flow structure is presented. (Author).

Experimental investigation in turbulent boundary layer flows represents one of the canonical geometries of wall bounded shear flows. Utmost relevance of such experiments, however, is applied in the engineering applications in aerospace and marine industries. In particular, continuous effort is being imparted to explore the underlying physics of the flow in order to develop models for numerical tools and to achieve flow control. Flow control experiments have been widely investigated since 1930’s. Several flow control technique has been explored and have shown potential benefit. But the choice of control technique depends largely on the boundary condition and the type of application. Hence, friction drag of subsonic transport aircraft is intended to be reduced within the scope of this Ph. D. topic. Therefore, application of active control method such as microblowing effect in the incompressible, zero pressure gradient turbulent boundary layer was investigated. A series of experiments have been performed in two different wind tunnel facilities. Wind tunnel from Department of Aerodynamics and Fluid Mechanics (LAS) was used for the measurements for moderate Reynolds number range in co-operation with the wind tunnel from Laboratoire de M´ecanique de Feiret Lille for large Reynolds number range. Measurements are conducted with the help of state-of-the-art techniques such as Laser Doppler Anemometry, Particle Image Velocimetry and electronic pressure sensors.

A combination of visual and quantitative measurements is presented, providing a physical picture of the turbulent boundary layer flow structure on a flat plate. The flow structure is shown to consist of three zones, each zone has a one to one correspondence to the well known regions of the u+, y+ mean velocity profile. A wall layer region is shown to exist below y+ = 10. An apparently fully turbulent region exists corresponding to the logarithmic ''law of the wall'' and the ''buffer'' region. An intermittent zone appears to agree closely with the ''wake'' deviation region. An entirely new result of the investigation is the delineation of the structure of the wall layer region. This region is shown to contain a relatively regular structure of low and high velocity fluid streaks alternating in the span direction, together with the ejection of low momentum fluid into the outer flow. Correlations are given for the rate of ejection and the streak spacing. A qualitative description of other features of the wall layer region and the character of the remainder of the boundary layer flow structure is presented. (Author).