Traveling wave solutions to incompressible unsteady 2-D laminar flows with heat transfer boundary

Analytical solutions play important roles in the understanding of fluid dynamics and heat transfer related problems. Some analytical solutions for incompressible steady/unsteady 2-D problems have been obtained in literature, but only a few of those are found under heat transfer conditions (which brings more complexities into the problem). This paper is focused on the analytical solutions to the basic problem of incompressible unsteady 2-D laminar flows with heat transfer. By using the traveling wave method, fluid dynamic governing equations are developed based on classical Navier-Stokes equations and can be reduced to ordinary differential equations, which provide reliable explanations to the 2-D fluid flows. In this study, a set of analytical solutions to incompressible unsteady 2-D laminar flows with heat transfer are obtained. The results show that both the velocity field and the temperature field take an exponential function form, or a polynomial function form, when traveling wave kind solution is assumed and compared in such fluid flow systems. In addition to heat transfer problem, the effects of boundary input parameters and their categorization and generalization of field forming or field evolutions are also obtained in this study. The current results are also compared with the results of Cai et al. (R. X. Cai, N. Zhang. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 2002, 45: 2623-2627) and others using different methods. It is found that the current method can cover the results and will also extend the fluid dynamic model into a much wider parameter ranges (and flow situations).