The effect of radiation on transient natural convection past a doubly infinite plate

The present research note is concerned with the transient (short time) simultaneous free convection and radiation analysis of a viscous fluid along a doubly infinite vertical isothermal flat plate. To simplify a very complicated problem, an incompressible flow field is used in the analysis. Generally, the exact numerical solution of this problem is quite lengthy. However, by considering an optically thick radiating gas, expressed by the Rosseland diffusion approximation, the solution is much simpler. Moreover, this case leads to a complete similarity transformation of the governing partial differential equations into a set of ordinary differential equations. An exact numerical solution is obtained of the resulting ordinary differential equations for a Prandtl number equal to 0.733 and for a wide range of involved parameters.