Chapter 2: Laminar

Boundary Layer Flow

Introduction
Convection can be understood as that phenomenon in which heat is carried from
one point to another by the particles moving themselves. Convection is broadly of
two types, Forced and Free convection. The cause and effect in these two types of
convection are different but the basic idea remains the same. The governing
equations are a little different for the two convection types.
Outline
The topics that will be covered are:
1) Flat Plate
a) Nusselt Number
b) Local Heat Transfer Coefficient
c) Average Heat Transfer Coefficient
d) Prandtl Number
e) Stanton Number
f) Variation of local heat transfer coefficient along boundary layer growth
g) Flat plate problem solving approach
 FLAT PLATE
Nusselt Number
Convection is a process in which the heat is conducted from the solid surface to the fluid through the
interface. The fluid then advects the heat away. So,

Convection = Conduction + Advection

Nusselt number is a dimensionless number which compares the convection heat transfer rate by the
fluid with the conduction heat transfer rate by the same fluid under identical conditions.

So, Nusselt Number is always greater than 1. It can also be defined as,

Where, h is the local heat transfer coefficient, is the characteristic length and is the thermal
conductivity of the fluid.
Local Heat Transfer Coefficient

It is the heat convected from a unit area under unit temperature gradient. At the

boundary,

Nusselt number will be

Average Heat Transfer Coefficient

The Local Heat transfer coefficient changes from position to position generally. In
order to calculate the net convection from an area, we must find out the average
heat transfer coefficient over that area.
Prandtl Number

Prandtl number is a dimensionless number which is defined by the ratio of

momentum diffusivity to thermal diffusivity. It relates hydrodynamic boundary layer
thickness to thermal boundary layer thickness in laminar flow.

For laminar flow, approximately,

Stanton Number

Stanton number is a dimensionless number which is defined by the ratio of the

heat transferred into the fluid to the thermal capacity of the fluid. It is given by the
formula,

Also,

By Colburn Analogy,
Governing Equations
● Continuity equation

● X-momentum equation

● Y-momentum equation

● Energy equation
Variation of local heat transfer coefficient along the boundary
layer growth

The empirical relation which is used for laminar flow over flat plate is,

From this, we can say that,

Approach to solve Flat Plate problems
● Temperature profile approach

● Nusselt number empirical formula approach

● Reynold-Colburn analogy approach