The Rotation of a Gravitating Sphere in a Monatomic Gas,I

The flow resulting from the steady rotation of a gravitating sphere in a monatomic gas is studied in two special cases. If the rotation is slow, then the motion consists of a swirling flow whose streamlines are concentric circles around the rotation axis, and a slower meridional flow whose structure depends on the strength of the gravitational field. This meridional flow is investigated in detail for small and large field strength. In the latter case, the scale height is small compared to the sphere radius, and most of the fluid is in a thin recirculating layer on the surface. However, the mathematics imposes a severe restriction on the rotation speed if the field is large, which leads to a more general investigation of the flow for very large field strength, i.e. for a thin “atmosphere”. Compressibility effects can be quite sizeable in this final solution. Though a thin recirculating surface layer still exists in only slightly modified form, the fluid outside this layer is much less tenuous than for the case when the rotation is slow. The flow in the region outside the boundary layer involves solution of two quasilinear elliptic equations.     

Existence of the stationary solution of a Rayleigh-type equation

A fluid flow along a semi-infinite plate with small periodic irregularities on the surface is considered for large Reynolds numbers. The boundary layer has a double-deck structure: a thin boundary layer (“lower deck”) and a classical Prandtl boundary layer (“upper deck”). The aim of this paper is to prove the existence and uniqueness of the stationary solution of a Rayleigh-type equation, which describes oscillations of the vertical velocity component in the classical boundary layer.     

Nonsimilar solutions for double-diffusion boundary layers on a sphere in micropolar fluids with constant wall heat and mass fluxes

This work presents nonsimilar boundary layer solutions for double-diffusion natural convection near a sphere with constant wall heat and mass fluxes in a micropolar fluid. A coordinate transformation is employed to transform the governing equations into nondimensional nonsimilar boundary layer equations and the obtained boundary layer equations are then solved by the cubic spline collocation method. Results for the local Nusselt number and the local Sherwood number are presented as functions of the vortex viscosity parameter, Schmidt number, buoyancy ratio, and Prandtl number. Higher vortex viscosity tends to retard the flow, and thus decreases the local convection heat and mass transfer coefficients, raising the wall temperature and concentration. Moreover, the local convection heat and mass transfer coefficients near a sphere in Newtonian fluids are higher than those in micropolar fluids.     

A common error made in investigation of boundary layer flows

The concept of boundary layer flow, introduced in 1904 by Prandtl, is a popular field in Fluid Mechanics for engineers, physicists and mathematicians. The present work is a critique to many papers published in the last 15 years in the field of boundary layer flow. The critique concerns the shape of velocity, temperature and concentration profiles which are truncated due to small calculation domain used during the numerical solution procedure. These truncated profiles are not compatible with the boundary layer theory and introduce errors in wall shear stress and wall heat transfer values.     

Boundary Layer Growth on a Spinning Sphere

The method of matched asymptotic expansions is employed forinvestigating the growth of the boundary layer on a sphere whichis impulsively started from rest in an incompressible viscousfluid of infinite extent. The sphere is supposed to move alongthe direction of a diameter with constant linear velocity andat the same time to rotate about this diameter with constantangular velocity. It is assumed that the Reynolds number islarge and the time of investigation is short. It is shown thatthe solution of the problem contains terms which are absentfrom the solution based on the boundary layer approximation.These additional terms depend on the Reynolds number, and delayflow separation.     

Heat transfer enhancement for boundary layer flow over a wedge by the use of electric fields

The effect of an electric field is investigated for heat transfer properties in a laminar, incompressible, non-isothermal boundary layer gas flow over a wedge. The governing boundary layer equations are reduced to an ordinary differential equation system using similarity transformations. The reduced equations are solved numerically for different values of electric and flow field parameters characterizing the ratio of electric force to fluid inertia force, Joule heating and ion kinetic work. For specific electric field function forms, leading to similarity solutions, velocity boundary layers are observed to become thinner and heat transfer properties are shown to be enhanced near the wall. The level of enhancement is controlled by the electric body force with additional effects of Joule heating and ion kinetic work on the bulk flow. The effects of low and high Prandtl numbers are also demonstrated. Heat transfer enhancement is observed to increase with increasing Prandtl number.     

Temperature distribution in a laminar plane wall jet

In the present note the temperature distribution in a laminar plane wall jet has been studied. It is found that a similarity solution of the energy equation exists. The resulting ordinary differential equation is reduced to a hypergeometric equation by a suitable transformation of the similarity variable and the solution, for arbitrary values of the Prandtl number, is obtained. It is concluded that the heat transfer at the wall at a given section and the product of volume and heat-flux through any cross-section of the boundary layer increase with the increase in the value of Prandtl number respectively.     

Laws of the wall for velocity and temperature in supersonic turbulent boundary layers

Scaling laws for velocity and temperature profiles in the near-wall region of sub- and supersonic turbulent boundary layers have been developed, which allow us to represent velocity and temperature profiles in compressible gas stream in terms of those in an incompressible boundary layer. They are obtained as asymptotic expansions of the solutions to the Reynolds equations in a small parameter — the Mach number based on the friction velocity and gas enthalpy on the wall. The leading term of the expansion for velocity corresponds to known Van Driest's formula. However, the obtained solution contains additional terms of order unity, which explains the contradiction between Van Driest's formula and experimental data. The law of the wall for temperature, which has been formulated for the first time, has an analogous structure. Besides the von Kármán constant and the turbulent Prandtl number in the logarithmic region, known for incompressible flow, the obtained relations contain three new universal constants, which do not depend on gas molecular properties and the specific heat ratio. (© 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Influence of Finite Amplitude Disturbances on the Nonstationary Modes of a Compressible Boundary Layer Flow

A weakly nonlinear stability analysis is performed to search for the effects of compressibility on a mode of instability of the three-dimensional boundary layer flow due to a rotating disk. The motivation is to extend the stationary work of [ 1 ] (hereafter referred to as S90) to incorporate into the nonstationary mode so that it will be investigated whether the finite amplitude destabilization of the boundary layer is owing to this mode or the mode of S90. Therefore, the basic compressible flow obtained in the large Reynolds number limit is perturbed by disturbances that are nonlinear and also time dependent. In this connection, the effects of nonlinearity are explored allowing the finite amplitude growth of a disturbance close to the neutral location and thus, a finite amplitude equation governing the evolution of the nonlinear lower branch modes is obtained. The coefficients of this evolution equation clearly demonstrate that the nonlinearity is destabilizing for all the modes, the effect of which is higher for the nonstationary waves as compared to the stationary waves. Some modes particularly having positive frequency, regardless of the adiabatic or wall heating/cooling conditions, are always found to be unstable, which are apparently more important than those stationary modes determined in S90. The solution of the asymptotic amplitude equation reveals that compressibility as the local Mach number increases, has the influence of stabilization by requiring smaller initial amplitude of the disturbance for the laminar rotating disk boundary layer flow to become unstable. Apart from the already unstable positive frequency waves, perturbations with positive frequency are always seen to compete to lead the solution to unstable state before the negative frequency waves do. Also, cooling the surface of the disk will be apparently ineffective to suppress the instability mechanisms operating in this boundary layer flow.     

Modeling of Free Convection Boundary Layer Flow on a Solid Sphere with Newtonian Heating

In this paper, the mathematical model of free convection boundary layer flow on a solid sphere with Newtonian heating, in which the heat transfer from the surface is proportional to the local surface temperature, is considered. The transformed boundary layer equations are solved numerically using an efficient numerical scheme known as the Keller-box method. Numerical solutions are obtained for the local wall temperature, the local skin friction coefficient, as well as the velocity and temperature profiles. The features of the flow and heat transfer characteristics for different values of the Prandtl number Pr and conjugate parameter γ are analyzed and discussed.     

Nonlinear stability of boundary layers for the Boltzmann equation with cutoff soft potentials

The study on the boundary layer is important in both mathematics and physics. This paper considers the nonlinear stability of boundary layer solutions for the Boltzmann equation with cutoff soft potentials when the Mach number of the far field is less than −1. Unlike the collision frequency is strictly positive in the hard potential or hard sphere model, the collision frequency has no positive lower bound for the cutoff soft potentials, so the decay in time cannot be expected. Instead, the present paper proves that the solution will always be in a small region around the boundary layer by noticing the decay property of collision operator in velocity.     

Examples of boundary layers associated with the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations

The author surveys a few examples of boundary layers for which the Prandtl boundary layer theory can be rigorously validated. All of them are associated with the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations for Newtonian fluids equipped with various Dirichlet boundary conditions (specified velocity). These examples include a family of (nonlinear 3D) plane parallel flows, a family of (nonlinear) parallel pipe flows, as well as flows with uniform injection and suction at the boundary. We also identify a key ingredient in establishing the validity of the Prandtl type theory, i.e., a spectral constraint on the approximate solution to the Navier-Stokes system constructed by combining the inviscid solution and the solution to the Prandtl type system. This is an additional difficulty besides the wellknown issue related to the well-posedness of the Prandtl type system. It seems that the main obstruction to the verification of the spectral constraint condition is the possible separation of boundary layers. A common theme of these examples is the inhibition of separation of boundary layers either via suppressing the velocity normal to the boundary or by injection and suction at the boundary so that the spectral constraint can be verified. A meta theorem is then presented which covers all the cases considered here.     

Navier-Stokes equations on an exterior circular domain: construction of the solution and the zero viscosity limit

In this Note, we consider the limit of Navier-Stokes equations on a circular domain. By an explicit construction of the solution, it is proved that, when viscosity goes to zero, solution converges to the Euler solution outside the boundary layer and to the Prandtl solution inside the boundary layer.     

Existence of nonlinear boundary layer solution to the Boltzmann equation with physical boundary conditions

In this paper, the existence of boundary layer solutions to the Boltzmann equation with two physical boundary conditions for hard sphere model is considered. The boundary condition is first imposed on incoming particles of diffuse reflection type and the solution tends to a global Maxwellian in the far field. Similar to the problem with Dirichlet boundary condition studied in [S. Ukai, T. Yang, S.H. Yu, Nonlinear boundary layers of the Boltzmann equation: I. Existence, Comm. Math. Phys. 236 (3) (2003) 373-393], the existence of a solution is shown to depend on the Mach number of the far field Maxwellian, and there is an implicit solvability conditions yielding the co-dimensions of the boundary data. At last, the specular reflection boundary condition is considered and the similar conclusions are obtained.     

Hydrodynamic and thermal slip flow boundary layers over a flat plate with constant heat flux boundary condition

In this paper the boundary layer flow over a flat plat with slip flow and constant heat flux surface condition is studied. Because the plate surface temperature varies along the x direction, the momentum and energy equations are coupled due to the presence of the temperature gradient along the plate surface. This coupling, which is due to the presence of the thermal jump term in Maxwell slip condition, renders the momentum and energy equations non-similar. As a preliminary study, this paper ignores this coupling due to thermal jump condition so that the self-similar nature of the equations is preserved. Even this fundamental problem for the case of a constant heat flux boundary condition has remained unexplored in the literature. It was therefore chosen for study in this paper. For the hydrodynamic boundary layer, velocity and shear stress distributions are presented for a range of values of the parameter characterizing the slip flow. This slip parameter is a function of the local Reynolds number, the local Knudsen number, and the tangential momentum accommodation coefficient representing the fraction of the molecules reflected diffusively at the surface. As the slip parameter increases, the slip velocity increases and the wall shear stress decreases. These results confirm the conclusions reached in other recent studies. The energy equation is solved to determine the temperature distribution in the thermal boundary layer for a range of values for both the slip parameter as well as the fluid Prandtl number. The increase in Prandtl number and/or the slip parameter reduces the dimensionless surface temperature. The actual surface temperature at any location of x is a function of the local Knudsen number, the local Reynolds number, the momentum accommodation coefficient, Prandtl number, other flow properties, and the applied heat flux.     

Oscillatory free convection flow of a second order fluid from a vertical plate

This paper investigates the problem of free convection flow of a second order liquid in the boundary layer from a semi-infinite vertical plate in which the mean surface temperature varies as a function of the distance from the leading edge of the plate. Study of the oscillatory flow is restricted to small amplitudesε only. Several graphs have been drawn and tables have been presented to depict the effect of elasticity of the liquid and Prandtl number on the velocity and temperature distributions and Nusselt number.     

Heat transfer in MHD viscoelastic fluid flow over a stretching sheet with variable thermal conductivity,non-uniform heat source and radiation

An analysis has been carried out to study the magnetohydrodynamic boundary layer flow and heat transfer characteristics of a non-Newtonian viscoelastic fluid over a flat sheet with a linear velocity in the presence of thermal radiation and non-uniform heat source. The thermal conductivity is assumed to vary as a linear function of temperature. The basic equations governing the flow and heat transfer are in the form of partial differential equations, the same have been reduced to a set of non-linear ordinary differential equations by applying suitable similarity transformation. The transformed equations are solved analytically by regular perturbation method. Numerical solution of the problem is also obtained by the efficient shooting method, which agrees well with the analytical solution. The effects of various physical parameters such as viscoelastic parameter, Chandrasekhar number, Prandtl number, variable thermal conductivity parameter, Eckert number, thermal radiation parameter and non-uniform heat source/sink parameters which determine the temperature profiles are shown in several plots and the heat transfer coefficient is tabulated for a range of values of said parameters. Some important findings reported in this work reveals that combined effect of variable thermal conductivity, radiation and non-uniform heat source have significant impact in controlling the rate of heat transfer in the boundary layer region.     

Heat transfer of a generalized stretching/shrinking wall problem with convective boundary conditions

In this paper, we investigate the heat transfer of a viscous fluid flow over a stretching/shrinking sheet with a convective boundary condition. Based on the exact solutions of the momentum equations, which are valid for the whole Navier–Stokes equations, the energy equation ignoring viscous dissipation is solved exactly and the effects of the mass transfer parameter, the Prandtl number, and the wall stretching/shrinking parameter on the temperature profiles and wall heat flux are presented and discussed. The solution is given as an incomplete Gamma function. It is found the convective boundary conditions results in temperature slip at the wall and this temperature slip is greatly affected by the mass transfer parameter, the Prandtl number, and the wall stretching/shrinking parameters. The temperature profiles in the fluid are also quite different from the prescribed wall temperature cases.     

Nonequilibrium jet boundary layer in a polyatomic gas

The two-dimensional nonequilibrium hypersonic free jet boundary layer gas flow in the near wake of a body is studied using a closed system of macroscopic equations obtained (as a thin-layer version) from moment equations of kinetic origin for a polyatomic single-component gas with internal degrees of freedom. (This model is can be used to study flows with strong violations of equilibrium with respect to translational and internal degrees of freedom.) The solution of the problem under study (i.e., the kinetic model of a nonequilibrium homogeneous polyatomic gas flow in a free jet boundary layer) is shown to be related to the known solution of the well-studied simpler problem of a Navier-Stokes free jet boundary layer, and a method based on this relation is proposed for solving the former problem. It is established that the gas flow velocity distribution along the separating streamline in the kinetic problem of a free jet boundary layer coincides with the distribution obtained by solving the Navier-Stokes version of the problem. It is found that allowance for the nonequilibrium nature of the flow with respect to the internal and translational degrees of freedom of a single-component polyatomic gas in a hypersonic free jet boundary layer has no effect on the base pressure and the wake angle.     

Spatial Stability for Mixed Convection Boundary Layer over a Heated Horizontal Plate

The spatial stability properties of a mixed convection boundary layer developing over a heated horizontal plate is studied here under linear and quasi-parallel flow assumption. The main aim of the present work is to find out if there is a critical buoyancy parameter that would indicate the importance of heat transfer in destabilizing mixed convection boundary layers, when the buoyancy effect is given by Boussinesq approximation. The undisturbed flow used here is that given by the similarity solution of [ 1 ] that implies the wall temperature to vary as the inverse square root of the distance from the leading edge of the plate. The stability of this flow has been investigated by using the compound matrix method (CMM)—that allows finding all the modes in the chosen range in the complex wave number plane for spatial stability analysis. Presented neutral curves for mixed convection boundary layer show the existence of two types of disturbances present simultaneously, for large buoyancy parameter. One notices very unstable high-frequency mode when the buoyancy parameter exceeds the above-mentioned critical value. This unstable thermal mode is in addition to the hydrodynamic mode of isothermal flow given by corresponding similarity profile. The calculated critical buoyancy parameter is shown to qualitatively match with experimental results.