FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER FOR THREE-DIMENSIONAL FLOW OVER AN EXPONENTIALLY STRETCHING SURFACE

Abstract

Abstract This study analyzes the laminar boundary-layer flow and heat transfer characteristics of a steady, three-dimensional viscous fluid driven by a horizontal surface stretched exponentially in two lateral directions. The simulations in this study assume that the surface temperature is also distributed exponentially and reduce the governing equations to a set of ordinary differential equations using a similarity transformation. This study develops a numerical procedure that combines the Ackroyd method and Runge-Kutta integration scheme to solve the transformed equations. Results show that heat transfer characteristics depend strongly on the stretching ratio, temperature exponent, and Prandtl number. Keywords: Boundary layerExponentially stretching surfaceHeat transferSimilarity solutionThree-dimensional flow Acknowledgments The author (I-C. Liu) would like to thank the National Science Council R.O.C. for financially supporting this study under grant No. NSC 99-2221-E-260-007.