The laminar boundary layer associated with the retarded flow of a compressible fluid

Abstract

Two aspects of the solution of the equations governing steady gas flow in a laminar boundary layer, when the main stream velocity is non-uniform, are considered. In the first place it is shown that the equations can be reduced to ordinary differential equations, whose solution implies the similarity of the distributions of velocity and temperature in planes perpendicular to the boundary, only in the case when the main stream velocity is uniform. In the second part, an extension of Pohlhausen's method is used to determine the point of separation of the boundary layer in an air flow in which the pressure increases with a uniform gradient.