Nonsteady Three-Dimensional Stagnation-Point Flow

Abstract

The equations of motion for the three-dimensional nonsteady flow of incompressible viscous fluid in the vicinity of a forward stagnation point are reduced to three ordinary differential equations for a potential flow field chosen to vary inversely as a linear function of time. The resulting ordinary differential equations contain two parameters C and D, the former characterizes the type of curvature of the surface around the stagnation point and the latter the degree of acceleration or deceleration of the potential flow. The simple stagnation-point problems which have been studied previously are obtainable as special cases of the present analysis by assigning particular values to C and D. Exact solutions have been computed numerically for the velocity field and the pressure distribution in the boundary-layer flow around the stagnation point of a three-dimensional blunt body for the values of the parameter C from 0–1.