On the Skin Friction near the Trailing Edge of a Flat Plate

Abstract

The laminar viscous flow near the trailing edge of a flat plate is studied by use of the modified Oseen approximation. Considering that at high Reynolds numbers, the flow region near the trailing edge is immersed in the boundary-layer flow coming from upstream, Imai (Proc. 11th Intern. Congr. Appl. Mech. (Springer- Berlin- 1964) p. 663) proposed a new method of approximation to replace the convective velocity in the Navier-Stokes equations by the velocity of a uniform-shear flow. In the present paper, in order to simplify the analysis, the convective velocity is replaced by an adequate mean velocity of the uniform-shear flow in the boundary layer. The approximate solution for the flow near the trailing edge is obtained. The skin friction on the flat plate is calculated and proved to be accurate for high Reynolds numbers.