This book presents recent developments in systematic studies of hydrodynamics and heat and mass transfer in laminar free convection, accelerating film boiling and condensation of Newtonian fluids, as well as accelerating film flow of non-Newtonian power-law fluids (FFNF). A novel system of analysis models is provided with a developed velocity component method, instead of traditional Falkner-Skan type transformation, and a system of models for treatment of variable thermophysical properties is presented with an innovative temperature parameter method that makes it easier to similarly treat related governing differential equations for consideration of fluid variable thermophysical properties. A pseudo-similarity method is applied for dealing with thermal boundary layer of FFNF, furthermore, with an induced local Prandtl number, which greatly simplifies the heat-transfer analysis and numerical calculation. Based on rigorous theoretical analyses, a system of numerical solutions is formulated by special curve-fitting approaches for simple and reliable predictions of heat and mass transfer and hydrodynamics. In view of a shortage of experimental results for velocity field of free convection boundary layer, recent rigorous experimental measurements are presented covering large temperature differences.

Dr. Deyi Shang got his Ph.D degree from Tsinghua University, China, worked at six universities in China, Europe and North America as professor and research scientist for 25 years. He has had his special contributions on mechanical and thermal engineering, heat transfer, thermal fluid flows, heat and mass transfer of free convection film flows with variable thermophysical properties, and heat transfer and hydrodynamics of accelerating film flow of non-Newtonian fluids. He was awarded very prestigious research scientist from Norwegian Research Council designed for outstanding foreign scientist with proven international reputations. The contributions are in his number of publications including eight papers in Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer, an authority and distinguished journal in his research area and were applied and cited by over 100 papers. He was included in Whos Who in the World (1999), USA, as an eminent scientist.