Problem Solving Series: Laminar Velocity Profile between Infinite Parallel Plates

Numerical Analysis for Nuclear Engineering (71089) Teaching Assistant: Syeilendra Pramuditya Department of Nuclear Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology 2012 Fall Semester

Consider a case of a fluid flowing between infinite parallel plates, without any heat input, as illustrated below:

Infinite plate (top)

y
Flowing fluid

y=L

vx
y=0

Infinite plate (bottom)

x
Fig. 1. Flowing fluid between infinite parallel plates And our interest is to obtain velocity profile (in x-direction) of the flowing fluid. To solve this isothermal hydrodynamic problem, as usual we will use our old friends the mass and momentum conservation equations, of course. Mass:

+ v = 0 t Momentum:
v + vv = p + + f t

(1)

(2)

For constant density and viscosity, and by neglecting the source term, eq. (2) becomes (for derivation details see chapter 5, section B in text book Nuclear Systems I):
v + v v = p + 2 v t

(3)

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For our 2D case, all we need to solve is the x component of the momentum equation:

vx p + vx v = + 2 vx t x

(4)

For steady state fully developed condition (vy=0 and vx/x=0), eq. (4) further simplifies to:
d 2 vx 1 dp = dy 2 dx

(5)

Analytical solution is obtained by integrating eq. (5) twice and applying boundary condition of
vx(y=0) = vx(y=L) = 0. The resulting equation is as follows:
vx = 1 1 dp 2 ( Ly y ) 2 dx (6)

This simple problem can also be solved numerically by simply discretizing eq. (5):
vx , j +1 2vx , j + vx , j 1 y
2

1 dp dx

(7)

We then use eq. (7) to perform numerical iteration until the converged solution is achieved:
new vx , j = old old vx , j +1 + vx , j 1

1 1 dp 2 y 2 dx

(8)

It is interesting to compare between the analytical and numerical results (the numerical code is written in Fortran and available from my website, if you are interested). The comparison is shown below:
Velocity Profile at Re = 500 0.0100

0.0075 y [m] Numerical 0.0050 Analytical

0.0025

0.0000 -0.05

-0.025

0.025 x velocity [m/s]

0.05

0.075

0.1

Fig. 2. Comparison between numerical and analytical results.

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As can be seen from Fig. 1, both results for this simple problem are practically identical to each other. This problem can be made more interesting by specifying velocity to the bottom and top plates, an example of numerical result is shown as follows:
Velocity Profile at Re = 500 (moving plates) 0.0100

0.0075 y [m]

0.0050

0.0025

0.0000 -0.05

-0.025

0.025 x velocity [m/s]

0.05

0.075

0.1

Fig. 3. Numerical solution of velocity profile (Re = 500, vx,bottom = 0.05 m/s, vx,top = -0.05 m/s)

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