Numerical Studies for Solving a Free Convection Boundary–Layer Flow Over a Vertical Plate

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, The aim of this study is to present a reliable combination of the shifted Legendre collocation method to approximate of the problem of free convection boundary-layer flow over a vertical plate as produced by a body force about a flat plate in the direction of the generating body force. The proposed method is based on replacement of the unknown function by truncated series of well known shifted Legendre expansion of functions. An approximate formula of the integer derivative is introduced. Special attention is given to study the convergence analysis and derive an upper bound of the error of the presented approximate formula. The introduced method converts the proposed equation by means of collocation points to a system of algebraic equations with shift Legendre coefficients. Thus, by solving this system of equations, the shifted Legendre coefficients are obtained. Boundary conditions in an unbounded domain, i.e. boundary condition at infinity, pose a problem in general for the numerical solution methods. The obtained results are in good agreement with those provided previously by the iterative numerical method. As a result, without taking or estimating missing boundary conditions, the shifted Legendre collocation method provides a simple, non-iterative and effective way for determining the solutions of nonlinear free convection boundary layer problems possessing the boundary conditions at infinity.