Viscous flow over a shrinking sheet with an arbitrary surface velocity

Abstract

In this paper, an analytical solution in a closed form for the boundary layer flow over a shrinking sheet is presented when arbitrary velocity distributions are applied on the shrinking sheet. The solutions with seven typical velocity profiles are derived based on a general closed form expression. Such flow is usually not self-similar and the solution can only be implemented when the mass transfer at the wall is prescribed and determined by the moving velocity of the wall. The characteristics of the flows with the typical velocity distributions are discussed and compared with previous similarity solutions. The flow is observed to have quite different behavior from that of the self-similar flow reported in the literature and the results demonstrate distinctive momentum and energy transport characteristics. Some plots of the stream functions are also illustrated to show the difference in flow field between the shrinking sheet and the stretching sheet. An integral approach to solve boundary layer flow over a shrinking or stretching sheet with uncoupled arbitrary surface velocity and wall mass transfer velocity is outlined and the effectiveness of this approach is discussed.