Numerical analysis of unsteady compressible laminar boundary layer flow

The unsteady compressible laminar boundary layer flow on an arbitrary cylinder due to an incident stream whose velocity varies arbitrarily with time is considered. The method presented is based on the separation between the convective and diffusive quantities. By defining some new variables, the splitting appears rather naturally, and the initialisation problem can be solved without difficulty. The transformed equations are solved with the help of a semi-implicit finite difference scheme which is unconditionally linearly stable. The computations have been applied to flows past a cylinder with constant and fluctuating free-stream velocities.