This work studied, both theoretically and experimentally, the inclined wall plumes which arise from a line thermal source imbedded at the leading edge of an adiabatic plate with arbitrary tilt angle between 0 and pi/2. An appropriate formulation and a very effective numerical scheme are developed to obtain rigorous numerical solutions over the full range of tilt angle from the horizontal to the vertical for fluids of any Prandtl number between 0.001 and 1000. The effects of the tilt angle on the velocity and temperature profiles are presented. A simple, but very accurate, correlation equation is proposed for predicting the wall temperature of the inclined plate over the whole range of lilt angle for 0.001 less than or equal to Pr less than or equal to 1000. The temperature fields of air over the inclined plates have been visualized by using holographic interferometry. The photographs of interferograms confirm the physical reality of the horizontal and the inclined wall plumes. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.
