
Compressible Boundary Layer Profiles

Cutaway explanation of the O-Ring disaster within reports of one Prof. R. Feynman.
Apparently, laminar flow was traditionally called Hagen-Poiseuille flow, named after Hagen’s work in 1839. In 1839, Hagen saw transitional effects between laminar and turbulent flow, which would not be collapsed until much later through the experiments of Reynolds.
What I am about to say on the phenomena of turbulent flows is still far from conclusive. It concerns, rather, the first steps in a new path which I hope will be followed by many others. The researches on the problem of turbulence which have been carried on at Göttingen for about five years have unfortunately left the hope of a thorough understanding of turbulent flow very small. The photographs and kinetographic pictures have shown us only how hopelessly complicated this flow is.
L. Prandtl (1926)
Shall I refuse my dinner because I do not fully understand the process of digestion?
Oliver Heaviside according to von Karman and Biot, on the subject of turbulence
“I have seen with astonishment that apart from a few little things there is nothing to be seen in his hydrodynamics but an impertinent conceit. His criticisms are puerile indeed, and show not only that he is no remarkable man, but also that he never will be.”
Daniel Bernoulli on Jean le Rond d’Alembert