The Viscous Sublayer along a Smooth Boundary

Abstract

If the sublayer is visualized as a steady, quasi-laminar flow, great difficulty is encountered in the physical description of the transition to the turbulent part of the flow. The proposed model visualizes a periodic growth and decay of the sublayer. The magnitude of the life period of the sublayer can be predicted theoretically and has been checked by experiment. As a consequence of this model, some predictions will be made herein on the generation of turbulence near the boundary.