1. Context

Reducing fuel consumption and drag will be increasingly important in the years to come. There are a number of reasons for this, such as dwindling global hydrocarbon resources and their rising price, significant growth in air and sea traffic, and the increasing penalization of greenhouse gas emissions. A significant part of the resistance to the forward motion of streamlined bodies, such as aircraft and ships, occurs in a thin fluid envelope, the boundary layer, which surrounds the surface of these bodies and in which the velocity changes from the external flow value to that of the wall. In the absence of boundary layer detachment,...