Computational fluid dynamic simulation of laminar flow over a flat plate

Abstract

The aim of this work is to apply CFD simulation on airflow over a flat plate to study the problem of hydrodynamic and thermal boundary layer and to analyse the effect of the length of the plate. The simulation ANSYS Fluent R18.1 has been applied to solve the governing equations of the flow. The simulation results have been verified by comparing the numerical solution with the analytical solution. The effect of changing the length of the plate is investigated while the other quantities were considered constant such as the free stream velocity, density, viscosity and temperature. The result showed excellent agreement between the numerical solution and analytical solution with maximum error of less than 6.19%. It is obtained that as the plate length increases the maximum value of the velocity contour, the Nusselt number, the wall shear stress, the skin friction coefficient and drag coefficient decreases.