Flow past a suddenly cooled horizontal plate

The problem of unsteady laminar, incompressible free convection above a horizontal semi-infinite flat plate is studied theoretically. It is assumed that for timet<0 the plate is hotter than its surroundings and at timet=0 the plate is suddenly cooled to the same temperature of its surroundings. Three solutions of the momentum and energy equations are obtained, namely

1. an analytical solution which is valid for small time,
2. an asymptotic analytical solution which is valid for large time, and
3. a numerical solution which matches these two limiting analytical solutions.

It is found that the numerical solution matches the small and large time solutions accurately. Finally, the variation of the velocity, temperature, skin friction and heat transfer on the plate with time are discussed.