Hp. Horton, NEAR-SIMILARITY APPROXIMATION FOR COMPRESSIBLE, LAMINAR BOUNDARY-LAYERS ON ADIABATIC WALLS, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Part G, Journal of aerospace engineering, 211(G5), 1997, pp. 285-294
Two-dimensional, compressible, laminar boundary layers with zero heat
transfer and a constant pressure gradient parameter are considered. Al
though it is well known that exact similarity is, in general, only pos
sible when the Prandtl number is equal to unity, it is shown here that
, at least for Prandtl numbers in the range from 0.5 to 2.0, a careful
choice of transformation gives partial differential equations in whic
h the streamwise derivatives are practically negligible, irrespective
of Mach number. The set of ordinary differential equations which resul
ts from setting the streamwise derivatives to zero is proposed as a us
eful approximation for generating families of velocity and temperature
profiles, for use in database methods for analysing boundary layer st
ability, for example.