The initial stage of the natural transition process is known as the Receptivity phase and consists of the transformation of environmental disturbances – both acoustic (sound) and vortical (turbulence) – into small perturbations within the boundary layer. The mechanisms by which these disturbances arise are varied and include freestream sound and/or turbulence interacting with surface curvature, shape discontinuities and surface roughness. These initial conditions are small, often unmeasurable perturbations to the basic state flow. From here, the growth (or decay) of these disturbances depends on the nature of the disturbance and the nature of the basic state. Acoustic disturbances tend to excite two-dimensional instabilities such as Tollmien–Schlichting waves (T-S waves), while vortical disturbances tend to lead to the growth of three-dimensional phenomena such as the crossflow instability.
Numerous experiments in recent decades have revealed that the extent of the amplification region, and hence the location of the transition point on the body surface, is strongly dependent not only upon the amplitude and/or the spectrum of external disturbances but also on their physical nature. Some of the disturbances easily penetrate into the boundary layer whilst others do not. Consequently, the concept of boundary layer transition is a complex one and still lacks a complete theoretical exposition.