ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the stationary and the non-stationary systems of the boundary layer theory for non-Newtonian fluids and analyzes the principal mathematical problems associated with these systems. It describes the system of boundary layer for a dilatable fluid in the case of a stationary symmetric flow. The chapter explains the existence and the uniqueness of a weak solution of the problem in question, and also examines some of its properties. The derivation of equations can be found, for instance, in the monograph by Shulman and Berkovsky, which also contains formulas for the solutions of such systems in the self-similar case, as well as experimental data and results of numerical calculations. The fact that perturbations in the boundary layer in dilatable fluids propagate with finite speed was originally discovered in the self-similar case as a result of formal calculations.
