An experimental investigation is made into the active control of the n
ear-wall region of a turbulent boundary layer using a linear feed-forw
ard control algorithm. A wall-based detection scheme is described whic
h effectively detects coherent structures and predicts downstream flow
behavior. A simple demonstration, using three wall-based sensors and
a single actuator, achieves a maximum of 31% reduction in u(rms) and 1
7% reduction in p(rms). (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.