Thermal convection in laminary boundary layers. I

Summary

The heat loss of a hot body with constant surface temperature by thermal convection in a laminary boundary layer is described by partial differential equations. These can only be reduced to ordinary differential equations if the temperature and velocity profiles at any two points are similar. This leads to a geometrical condition that is given here for cases of twodimensional and of rotational symmetry. some examples of the resulting equations are worked out in first approximation. The horizontal cylinder and the sphere do not satisfy the condition, but the flow in the neighbourhood of their lower stagnation points may be found approximately in just the same way. The results of other authors are discussed and extended. Other cases will be treated in a second paper.