Lateral Edge Effects on the Sherwood Number in Turbulent Flow over a Flat Plate

Experimental results for the Sherwood number variation near the lateral edge of the active surface of a smooth, finite-width flat plate in turbulent boundary layer flow are presented. Using naphthalene sublimation, local mass transfer rates are found for two different free stream velocities. A semi-empirical correlation of the experimental data is presented, allowing calculation of the increase of mass transfer near the edge and the size of the region affected by the lateral edge. The effect is shown to scale more so with the diffusion thickness than the boundary layer thickness.