1 I-campus project School-wide Program on Fluid Mechanics Modules on High Reynolds Number Flows K. P. Burr, T. R. Akylas & C. C. Mei CHAPTER TWO TWO-DIMENSIONAL LAMINAR BOUNDARY LAYERS 1 Introduction. When a viscous fluid flows along a fixed impermeable wall, or past the rigid surface of an immersed body, an essential condition is that the velocity at any point on the wall or other fixed surface is zero. The extent to which this condition modifies the general character of the flow depends upon the value of the viscosity. If the body is of streamlined shape and if the viscosity is small without being negligible, the modifying effect appears to be confined within narrow regions adjacent to the solid surfaces; these are called boundary layers. Within such layers the fluid velocity changes rapidly from zero to its main-stream value, and this may imply a steep gradient of shearing stress; as a consequence, not all the viscous terms in the equation of motion will be negligible, even though the viscosity, which they contain as a factor, is itself very small. A more precise criterion for the existence of a well-defined laminar boundary layer is that the Reynolds number should be large, though not so large as to imply a breakdown of the laminar flow. 2 Boundary Layer Governing Equations. In developing a mathematical theory of boundary layers, the first step is to show the existence, as the Reynolds number R tends to infinity, or the kinematic viscosity ν tends to zero, of a limiting form of the equations of motion, different from that obtained by putting ν = 0 in the first place. A solution of these limiting equations may then reasonably be expected to describe approximately the flow in a laminar boundary layer