The boundary layer on a flat plate moving transversely in a rotating, stratified fluid

Abstract

The motion of a horizontal plate moving in its own plane in a rotating, stratified fluid is studied to establish the parameter conditions specifying the onset of boundary-layer blocking for the entire range of Rossby and Russell numbers. Régimes in Rossby–Russell number space defining the range of applicability of the inertia–viscous, buoyancy–viscous, and Coriolis–viscous boundary-layer balances are presented, and similarity solutions valid over a limited region of that space are derived. The plate drag and heat transfer are computed from the similarity solutions.