ABSTRACT
The Galen B. Schubauer's 1935 paper, Air Flow in a Separating Boundary Layer, provided great insight into separation (or stall) of a laminar boundary layer developing over an airfoil with the cross-section of an elliptic cylinder. The purpose of the work was to test an approximate solution to the applicable flow equations advanced by K. Pohlhausen. The hot-wire anemometer had emerged as the fundamental instrument for measuring boundary layer turbulence as well as boundary layer velocity distributions. This instrument was known to be sensitive to other parameters which could cause errors in the turbulence and velocity measurements if proper corrections were not made. Substantial improvement of the experimental equipment would be required to provide necessary control of all the parameters and make high quality measurements. The regions where disturbances are amplified or damped are separated by a curve of "neutral stability".
