Steady flow in the laminar boundary layer of a gas

Abstract

If the boundary-layer equations for a gas are transformed by Mises’s transformation, as was done by Kármán & Tsien for the flow along a flat plate of a gas with unit Prandtl number σ, the computation of solutions is simplified, and use may be made of previously computed solutions for an incompressible fluid. For any value of the Prandtl number, and any variation of the viscosity μ with the temperature T , after the method has been applied to flow along a flat plate (a problem otherwise treated by Crocco), the flow near the forward stagnation point of a cylinder is calculated with dissipation neglected, both with the effect of gravity on the flow neglected and with this effect retained for vertical flow past a horizontal cylinder. The approximations involved by the neglect of gravity are considered generally, and the cross-drift is calculated when a horizontal stream flows past a vertical surface. When σ =1, μ∞ T , and the boundary is heat-insulated, it is shown that the boundary-layer equations for a gas may be made identical, whatever be the main stream, with the boundary-layer equations for an incompressible fluid with a certain, determinable, main stream. The method is also applied to free convection at a flat plate (with the heat of dissipation and the variation with altitude of the state of the surrounding fluid neglected) and to laminar flow in plane wakes, but for plane jets the conditions σ =1, μ∞ T , previously imposed by Howarth,are also imposed here in order to obtain simple solutions.