Free convection from a flat plate

Abstract

A numerical solution is presented for the development of free convection from a semi-infinite vertical flat plate which is uniformly heated up to a length l from the base and insulated for the rest of its length. At great heights above the heated part of the plate, the velocity and temperature distributions behave as if the heat were put in as a line source of heat at the base of the plate. Matching of the solutions for the heated and the insulated parts of the plate, by keeping the fluxes of heat and momentum continuous, determines the position of the effective origin of the similarity solution for the insulated plate in terms of the length, l, of the heated part of the plate. Graphs of the dimensionless velocity, temperature, heat flux and axial length parameters are given for different values of the Prandtl number.