Compliant Coatings: A Decade of Progress

This brief article reviews the important developments in the field of compliant coatings that took place in the past ten years. During this period progress in theoretical and computational methods somewhat outpaced that in experimental efforts. There is no doubt that compliant coatings can be designed to delay transition and to suppress noise on marine vehicles as well as other practical hydrodynamic devices. Transition Reynolds numbers that exceed by an order of magnitude those on rigid-surface boundary layers can be achieved. There is renewed evidence of favorable interactions of compliant coatings even for air flows and even for turbulent boundary layers, but more research is needed to confirm these latest results.