Surface thermal capacity effects in transient natural convection flows at high Prandtl number (Q1064934)

The author considers a flat vertical plate of finite thickness and finite thermal capacity, immersed in an ''extensive'' incompressible quiescent fluid at a uniform temperature. At time \(t=0\), the plate is suddenly subjected to a constant and uniformly distributed heat input. For the fluid, the usual Boussinesq and boundary layer approximations are made. The independent variables are the vertical distance x, the horizontal distance y from the plate, and time t. A matched asymptotic expansion in negative powers of the Prandtl number \(\sigma\) is used, combined with an explicit difference scheme. The scaling and the expansion are chosen so that, to lowest order, (i) the inner region is dominated by buoyancy and viscous forces and (ii) the outer region by viscous and momentum effects. Since the inner and outer stretched variables for x and t are equal, the expansions can be matched for fixed x and t. A true transient regime is identified. For large \(\sigma\), the time to steady state is found to increase proportional to \(\sigma^{3/5}\).