Local heat transfer on a finite width surface with laminar boundary layer flow

The effect of a lateral discontinuity in the thermal boundary conditions in two dimensional laminar flow on a flat plate, is investigated by numerical and analytical modeling. When the thermal and momentum boundary layers start at the same location, the resulting self-similar two dimensional boundary layer equations were solved numerically. For an unheated starting length, three dimensional numerical simulations were required. For both the three and two dimensional thermal simulations, a Blasius velocity field was assumed. It is found that all the Nusselt numbers collapse to a single curve when graphed as a function of a spanwise similarity variable. Simple correlations for the local Nusselt number on a rectangular flat plate are presented for a variety of boundary conditions.