Influences of fluid property variation on the boundary layers of a stretching surface

Summary. In this work, the influences of temperature-dependent fluid properties on the boundary layers over a continuously stretching surface with constant temperature are investigated. Based on the boundary layer assumptions, the coupled similarity equations are obtained for special situations, in which the fluid density and heat capacity are assumed without dependence on the temperature. Those similarity equations are solved numerically. The influences of property variation on wall stresses and heat fluxes are discussed. It is found that the property variation can influence the distributions of both fluid velocity and temperature across the boundary layers. For the thermal boundary layer, using mean properties evaluated at the average temperature of wall and ambient fluid can give good results for the temperature distribution. However, for the momentum boundary layer, the difference of velocity distributions can be large.