A numerical investigation of the flow around a flat plate at zero incidence up to a Reynolds number of 5·10⁵.

The flow around a flat plate at zero incidence is studied as a numerical experiment with an in-house code. The Reynolds number varies from 0.1 up to 5·10⁵. Although the flow has been studied extensively for more than hundred years, there are still issues unresolved. First of all, there is no single laboratory experiment that studies how the skin friction along the flat plate varies in the whole range of the Reynolds numbers. Some of the most notable studies on this subject are limited either in the range from 30 < Re < 2500 or from 1·10⁵ < Re < 5·10⁵. To the best of our knowledge, there is no single numerical experiment that can either verify these results or claim anything different. In addition, there is the issue with the transverse component of the velocity of this flow which has never been a subject of study so far in all attempts to verify the boundary layer theory related to this case. This work attempts to fill this gap by performing an appropriate numerical experiment. The numerical method for the solution of the Navier Stokes is finite elements. Parallel computing is absolutely necessary for this research, since more than 90 millions unknowns are involved. The flow is studied both with and without pressure gradient, in order to investigate the difference in the results.