On a Seemingly New Three Dimensional Stagnation Point Flow

Abstract

In a recent paper by Abbassi and Rahimi (2009, “Nonaxisymmetric ThreeDimensional StagnationPoint Flow and Heat Transfer on a Flat Plate,’’ ASME J. Fluids Eng, 131(7), p. 074501) the existence of a new nonaxisymmetric 3D stagnationpoint flow has been reported. The present paper shows, however, that the model of Abbassis and Rahimi is fully equivalent to the classical 3D stagnationpoint flow of Howarth (1951, “The Boundary Layer in ThreeDimensional Flow—Part II: The Flow Near a Stagnation Point,’’ Philos. Mag., 42, pp. 1433–1440) published more than sixty years ago. Thus their “new’’ solution can be recovered from Howarth's known solution by simple transformations, without any additional research effort. Once this flow problem is solved, the solution of the heat transfer problem of Abbassi and Rahimi (2009, “Nonaxisymmetric ThreeDimensional StagnationPoint Flow and Heat Transfer on a Flat Plate,’’ ASME J. Fluids Eng, 131(7), p. 074501) can be calculated by a semianalytical or by a usual numerical procedure.