Steady Free Convection to a Flat Plate With Uniform Surface Heat Flux and Nonuniform Acceleration

Abstract

Solutions for laminar and turbulent boundary layers are arrived at by means of the integral method. These show that the nonuniformity in acceleration results in distributions (along the plate) for the local heat transfer coefficient and boundary layer thickness which differ from the classical case of uniform acceleration. For the laminar boundary layer under nonuniform acceleration, these distributions yield results for uniform surface heat flux which are identical with those for uniform surface temperature. However, for the turbulent boundary layer, this identity does not apply.