Natural convection near a vertical plate with ramped wall temperature

The unsteady natural convective flow of an incompressible viscous fluid near a vertical plate has been considered. It is assumed that the bounding plate has a ramped temperature profile. The exact solutions of the energy and momentum equations, under the usual Boussinesq approximation, have been obtained in closed form. There are two different solutions for the fluid velocity—one valid for the fluids of Prandtl numbers different from unity, and the other for which the Prandtl number is unity. The variations of the fluid temperature, velocity as well as the Nusselt number and wall skin friction have been presented graphically. The natural convection near a ramped temperature plate has also been compared with the flow near a plate with constant temperature.