You’re sort of describing the fundamental gestalt of an aircraft: lift. Aerospace engineers (hello!) spend a lot of time on laminar flow about the wing because when it stops being laminar the flow separates and then the plane goes down more.
You’re sort of describing the fundamental gestalt of an aircraft: lift. Aerospace engineers (hello!) spend a lot of time on laminar flow about the wing because when it stops being laminar the flow separates and then the plane goes down more.
Not true, laminar/turbulent and attached/separated are independent descriptors. Flow can be laminar+attached, laminar+separated (e.g., laminar separation bubbles), turbulent+attached (e.g., the majority of boundary layers on large aircraft), or turbulent+separated.
You’re right, I should have said when state changes.
L/T:A/S are theoretically independent, but not independent for a given airfoil. (High-lift airfoils, common in gliders and most airframes with flaps deployed, are turbulent boundary-layer airfoils.)
Sure. My point is that if there's one thing aerospace engineers are constantly thinking about, it's fluid flow. Including, critically, when it's laminar and when it's not.