g-Jitter induced free convection near a stagnation point

 The effect of a small but fluctuating gravitational field, characteristic of g-jitter, on the flow near the forward stagnation point of a two-dimensional symmetric body resulting from a step change in its surface temperature has been considered in this paper. The transformed equations are solved numerically by a very efficient finite-difference method known as the Keller-box technique to investigate the effects on the shear stress and rate of heat transfer of variations in the Prandtl number, Pr, the forcing amplitude, a, and the forcing frequency, ω. It has been found that these parameters affect considerably the shear stress and the rate of heat transfer. Received on 28 February 2000