A good understanding of turbulent compressible flows is essential to the design and operation of high-speed vehicles. Such flows occur, for example, in the external flow over the surfaces of supersonic aircraft, and in the internal flow through the engines. Our ability to predict the aerodynamic lift, drag, propulsion and maneuverability of high-speed vehicles is crucially dependent on our knowledge of turbulent shear layers, and our understanding of their behavior in the presence of shock waves and regions of changing pressure. Turbulent Shear Layers in Supersonic Flow provides a comprehensive introduction to the field, and helps provide a basis for future work in this area. Wherever possible we use the available experimental work, and the results from numerical simulations to illustrate and develop a physical understanding of turbulent compressible flows.

The problem of predicting the behavior of the incompressible turbulent boundary layer in an adverse pressure gradient is re-examined. An outline of the problem is given along with a brief summary of the work that has already been done, including both experimental investigation are presented for a separating turbulent boundary layer with various pressure distributions. An approximate theory is developed in which the momentum integral equation is satisfied for each half of the boundary layer. The velocity profiles used in the analysis consist of the well known wall and wake regions, resulting in a two-parameter family with the Reynolds number as one parameter. It is assumed, with some experimental justification, that the eddy viscosity can be reasonably approximated from zero pressure gradient experimets. The numerical calculations, using the Runge-Kutta procedure, show good agreement with the experiments. The reliability that can be expected of such approximate methods is discussed. (Author).