A new family of unsteady boundary layers over a stretching surface

In this paper, a new family of unsteady boundary layers over a stretching flat surface was proposed and studied. This new class of unsteady boundary layers involves the flows over a constant speed stretching surface from a slot, and the slot is moving at a certain speed. Depending on the slot moving parameter, the flow can be treated as a stretching sheet problem or a shrinking sheet problem. Both the momentum and thermal boundary layers were studied. Under special conditions, the solutions reduce to the unsteady Rayleigh problem and the steady Sakiadis stretching sheet problem. Solutions only exist for a certain range of the slot moving parameter, alpha. Two solutions are found for -53.55 degrees < alpha < -45 degrees. There are also two solution branches for the thermal boundary layers at any given Prandtl number in this range. Compared with the upper solution branch, the lower solution branch leads to simultaneous reduction in wall drag and heat transfer rate. The results also show that the motion of the slot greatly affects the wall drag and heat transfer characteristics near the wall and the temperature and velocity distributions in the fluids. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.