Originally Posted by
M2dude
If I may, I would now like to mention the 'some oil lamps and diesel oil' story. This is a true story told to me by Dr Ted Talbot, the father of the Concorde Intake, brilliant aerodynamicist and all round amazing gentleman. Ted had been invited in 1975 to speak to the US test pilots at Edwards Air Force Base in California, and after he landed he was invited to take a tour through one of the top secret hangars there, and in this hangar were a few glistening Mach 2.5 design B1A development aircraft. Now Ted had heard that Rockwell were having major difficulties with the engine intakes, and obviously had more than a passing interest in such things, and was allowed to take a close look. Just above and slightly forward of each intake he observed several beautiful made precision total pressure probes mounted under the wings, and although he had a good idea what they were for, said nothing at the time.
That evening, Ted gives his presentation speech to the assembled Test pilots, explaining in fair detail how the Concorde engine intake operated, and that the fact that unlike most other supersonic designs, the engine power was more or less freely variable at Mach 2 and above, even to the extent that if necessary the throttle could be closed all the way to the idle stop. There allegedly many gasps of amazement and disbelief in the room at this, and one B1A pilot was heard to ask his boss 'why the hell can't WE do that John'?. (It should be borne in mind here that the 'traditional' way of slowing down Mach 2+ aircraft is not to touch the throttles initially, and just cut the afterburners. If you don't do it this way many designs will drive into unstart and even flame-out).
After the audience had asked Ted several questions about Concorde, Ted was then invited to ask the assembled USAF and Grumman personnel about the B1A programme, which would be honestly answered within the confines of security considerations. Ted said that he only had one real point to raise; 'I see that you are having major difficulties with wing boundary level interference at the engine inlets'. There was now a gasp of horror from various members of the USAF entourage, 'That's top secret, how the hell do you know that?'. Ted chortled 'it's easy, I saw that you have a multitude of precision pressure sensors under the wing forward of the intakes, that I assume are to measure the wing boundary flows'. Ted then unhelpfully comes up with 'Oh, and you've got the design completely wrong, your intakes are mounted sideways, and that allows the intake shocks to rip into the wing boundary layer, which will completely screw up your inlets at high supersonic speeds. That in my opinion is where most of your problems lie, with wing boundary level interference, but I think that your probes for measuring boundary layer are beautiful, we never had such things'. According to Ted there was not so much uproar at the meeting as much as horror and amazement that this (even then) quite senior in years British aerodynamicist had in a few seconds observed the fundamental design flaw in an otherwise superb but top secret aircraft, and could even see what they were trying to do about it. Ted was asked, 'so you had no boundary layer issues with Concorde then?' Oh we had a few, mainly with the diverter section mounted above the intake' replies Ted, 'but we sorted out the problems relatively easily. 'You said that you did not use precision pressure probes under the wing to measure boundary layer flow fields, so what DID you use then?', asks a Rockwell designer. 'Some oil lamps and diesel oil' replies Ted. The room is now filled with laughter from all those assembled, but Ted shouts 'I am serious, it's an old wind tunnel trick. You mix up diesel oil with lamp black, which you then paint over the wing surface forward of the intakes, where it forms a really thick 'goo', which sticks like glue to the wing'. The pilots in particular seem quite fascinated now, and Ted goes on; 'You fly in as cold air that you can find (we flew out of Tangiers and Casablanca) and flew as fast as you could. As the skin temperature increases with Mach number, the diesel and lamp black 'paint goo' becomes quite fluid, and start to follow the boundary layer flow field. You then decelerated as rapidly as possible, and the flow field 'picture; is frozen into the now again solid 'goo'. After we landed we just took lots of pictures, repeated the process for several flights until we know everything that we needed to know about our difficulties. After doing some redesign work we then repeated the exercise again several times, eventually proving that we'd got things right'. The audience asked Ted if this technique might help them with the B1A, but he replied that although it might help them with accurately illustrating the problem, in his opinion it was irelevant, 'because the intakes are the wrong way round'.
The B1A intake problems were never resolved, and in 1977 the project was cancelled, due to performance and cost issues. However the project was reborn as the B1B, not entering service until 1986. Although an amazing aircraft, with astonishing low altitude performance and capability, it is a fixed intake design, limited to Mach 1.6 at altitude. Ted was right it seems.