Abstract

Thermal instability of forced convection boundary layers with nonzero streamwise pressure gradient is examined for moderate to high Prandtl numbers. The analysis is carried out for the family of Falkner-Skan flows, here viewed as the lowest order local similarity approximation of general forced convection boundary layers. Calculated critical Rayleigh numbers and wave numbers are found to be independent of the streamwise pressure gradient in the limiting case of infinite Prandtl number, and only weakly dependent on the streamwise pressure gradient for finite Prandtl number cases when the conduction thickness is employed as the reference length scale.

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