Velocity Profile Our results for the boundary layer experiment showed little more than a set of basic

trends. For low and high speed flows, it is suggested from the Reynolds numbers less than the critical Reynolds number that the flow was laminar in all cases. Despite the prediction, the flows did not appear to be laminar. Figure *** clearly shows a series of upward curving velocity profiles which demonstrate the effects of the flat plate in the flow stream. Clearly the flow is slowed by the plate and as the boundary layer develops in each case the velocity begins to approach the free stream velocity of about 7.81 0.08 m/s. The boundary layer effects down the plate are also strange - the profiles have similar slopes nearer the free stream compared with the 6 cm and 20 cm trials at the same flow speed, though the 6 cm and 20 cm trials are more linear overall. Also somewhat curious is that we were able to measure much smaller velocities in the 2 cm trial. If the boundary layer thickens with increasing horizontal position we might expect to see smaller velocities further down the pipe for a given height. Instead we see no trend. At about 2.0 0.1 mm from the leading edge, there appears to be an increase in velocity between the 2 cm, 4 cm, and 6 cm profiles from about 3.3 0.1 m/s to 5.7 0.1 m/s, but for the 20 cm trial the minimum speed drops to about 5.2 0.1 m/s. The Blasius profiles shown in Figure *** offer little more than the velocity profiles in terms of the validity of boundary layer theory. The 2 cm trial showed curvature similar to the Blasius profile, but there is a significant shift in the data which is difficult to explain. There also seems to be a downward shift in the non-dimensional velocity for each of the 4 low-speed flows and the 3 high-speed flows. For the high-speed flows, the transformed velocity profiles seem to mesh better with the blasius curve, though the non-dimensional velocity lies between 7.5 0.2 and 9.5 0.2. Unfortunately, these flows were intended to be turbulent. This correlation therefore suggests that the flow was indeed laminar as predicted by the Reynolds number, and other may errors are to blame for the discrepancies between the predicted and experimental profiles. Overall the general trends of the velocity profile experiment showed some similarities with fluid dynamics theory, but systematic errors clearly affected the accuracy of the measurements.

Boundary Layer Although the boundary layer experiments showed a similar number of discrepancies from theory, the data measured is more reasonable than the velocity profile data and confirms a number of interesting trends. For the low-speed trial, the boundary layer thickness seemed to exceed the predicted thickness for both the turbulent and laminar boundary layers. This suggests there may be some other process affecting these measurements in addition the effects of the plate. Also clearly visible is a jump and change in slope between 20 and 30 cm from the leading edge. This may suggest a transition to turbulence in this region. A similar trend was also observed for

the higher Reynolds number trial. In this trial however, the boundary layer profiles drops between the predicted turbulent and laminar boundary thicknesses for horizontal positions greater than 40.0 0.3 cm. For both boundary layer thickness profiles, there still appears to be a constant offset. Fixing both profiles at a boundary layer thickness between the turbulent and laminar predictions, the thickness profile would lie completely between the two predictions. Given this offset due to an unknown measurement error, that would suggest the flow is between turbulent and laminar regimes, and this behavior might indeed be expected. Another useful way to interpret the boundary layer thickness measurements is to look for a power law dependance on the profile. Figure *** shows a logarithmic plot of the horizontal and vertical positions of the boundary layer. After separating the data based on suggested laminar and turbulent divide, we found that the boundary layer thickness varied with position with a power of 0.506 0.005 between 2.0 0.1 cm and 30.0 0.1 cm from the leading edge. Laminar theory predicts a 0.5 power law dependence, meaning our trend differs by only 1 1% from the expected value. Similarly the turbulent power was found to be 0.220 0.005, which compared to the (1/7) expected value for turbulence is about a 54 1 % error. Interestingly, for the higher-speed flow case, both the turbulent and laminar regimes showed power law trends varying with exponents of about 0.43 0.1. This represents about a 14 1% error from laminar theory, but suggests both regimes are actually laminar for this flow. As expected at higher speeds, the boundary layer thickness did drop in comparison to the low Reynolds number trial, however the increased flow speed should also induce turbulence closer to the leading edge of the plate.