NATURAL CONVECTION-RADIATION INTERACTION IN BOUNDARY-LAYER FLOW OVER HORIZONTAL SURFACES

In this paper the interaction of natural convection with thermal radiation has been studied for boundary-layer flow of an absorbing and emitting fluid over an isothermal semi-infinite flat plate. In the analysis, the radiative heat flux is represented by the Rosseland approximation. It has been found that thermal radiation plays a significant role in the net heat-transfer process. For both a hot surface facing upward and a cold surface facing downward, the thermal radiation interaction enhances the wall shear stress as well as the surface heat-transfer rate. The numerical results presented, though based on an approximate radiative flux analysis, are expected to provide the significant qualitative and quantitative behavior of the physical problem treated in the paper.