Continuous adjoint complement to the Blasius equation

This manuscript is concerned with a continuous adjoint complement to two-dimensional, incompressible, first-order boundary-layer equations for a flat plate boundary layer. The text is structured into three parts. The first part demonstrates that the adjoint complement can be derived in two ways, following either a first simplify then derive or a first derive and then simplify strategy. The simplification step comprises the classical boundary-layer (BL) approximation, and the derivation step transfers the primal flow equation into a companion adjoint equation. The second part of the paper comprises the analyses of the coupled primal/adjoint BL framework. This leads to similarity parameters, which turn the partial-differential-equation (PDE) problem into a boundary value problem described by a set of ordinary-differential-equations (ODEs) and support the formulation of an adjoint complement to the classical Blasius equation. Opposite to the primal Blasius equation, its adjoint complement consists of two ODEs, which can be simplified depending on the treatment of advection. It is shown that the advective fluxes, which are frequently debated in the literature, vanish for the investigated self-similar BL flows. Differences between the primal and the adjoint Blasius framework are discussed against numerical solutions, and analytical expressions are derived for the adjoint BL thickness, wall shear stress, and subordinated skin friction and drag coefficients. The analysis also provides an analytical expression for the shape sensitivity to shear driven drag objectives. The third part assesses the predictive agreement between the different Blasius solutions and numerical results for Navier–Stokes simulations of a flat plate BL at Reynolds numbers between 10 3 ≤ Re L ≤ 10 5. It is seen that the reversal of the inlet and outlet locations and the direction of the flow, inherent to the adjoint formulation of convective kinematics, poses a challenge when investigating real finite length (finite Re-number) flat plate boundary layer problems. Efforts to bypass related issues are discussed.