Boundary-Layer Separation From Downstream Moving Boundaries

Abstract

The laminar boundary-layer equations for incompressible flow with a mild adverse pressure gradient were numerically solved for flows over downstream moving boundaries. It was demonstrated that the vanishing of skin friction in this case is not related to separation.2 Indeed the integration proceeds smoothly through a point of vanishing skin friction and further downstream a Goldstein-type singularity appears at a station where all the properties of separation according to the model of Moore, Rott, and Sears are present. It is also numerically demonstrated that the singular behavior is not uniform with n, the distance perpendicular to the wall, but it is initiated at a point away from the wall leaving below a region of nonsingular flow. The foregoing points provide numerical justification of the general theoretical models of unsteady boundary-layer separation suggested by Sears and Telionis.