Abstract
The paper studies the boundary-value problem arising from the behaviour of a fluid occupying the half space x > 0 above a rotating disk which is coincident with the plane x = 0 and rotates about its axis which remains fixed. The equations which describe axially symmetric solutions of this problem are f ''' + ff ''+½( g 2f ' 2 ) = ½ Ω 2 , g "+ fg ' = f ' g , with the boundary conditions f (0) = a , f '(0) = 0, g (0) = Ω 0 ); f '(∞) = 0, g (∞) = Ω , where a is a constant measuring possible suction at the disk, Ω 0 is the angular velocity of the disk, and Ω is an angular velocity to which the fluid is subjected at infinity. When Ω = 0, existence of solutions has previously been proved by the ‘shooting technique’. This method breaks down when Ω 0 ǂ 0 because of oscillations in the functions f and g , but in the present paper existence is first proved by a fixed point method when Ω 0 is close to Ω and then extended for all Ω 0 , with the important restriction that Ω 0 and Ω be of the same sign.

This publication has 2 references indexed in Scilit: