Finite Volume Study of Laminar Boundary Layer Properties for Flow over a Flat Plate at Zero Angle of Incidence

Boundary layer theory is considered to be the cornerstone of our knowledge about the fluid flow over a surface which not only describes some intriguing physical phenomena of fluid dynamics that were rather obscure before the year 1904 when Prandtl proposed the theory, but also pivotal in practical fields of engineering. The boundary layer which is known as the distance from the surface to a particular point perpendicular to the direction of flow where the flow velocity has retained 99% of the free stream velocity providing ‘no-slip’ condition at the surface i.e. zero velocity of flow at the surface; can be laminar or turbulent and there is a zone of ‘transition’ from laminar to turbulent depending on Reynolds number. In this paper the intriguing properties of laminar boundary layer such as development of velocity profile along the flow direction, boundary layer thickness, displacement thickness, momentum thickness, shape factor, wall shear stress, friction coefficient, drag coefficient etc. for flow over a smooth flat plate of 1 meter are studied by exact solution of Blasius’s equationand ‘Momentum Equation Method ’using Finite Volume solution of Navier-Stokes equations.