On a Seemingly New Three-Dimensional Stagnation-Point Flow

In a recent paper by Abbassi and Rahimi (2009, "Nonaxisymmetric Three-Dimensional Stagnation-Point Flow and Heat Transfer on a Flat Plate,'' ASME J. Fluids Eng, 131(7), p. 074501) the existence of a new nonaxisymmetric 3D stagnation-point flow has been reported. The present paper shows, however, that the model of Abbassis and Rahimi is fully equivalent to the classical 3D stagnation-point flow of Howarth (1951, "The Boundary Layer in Three-Dimensional Flow-Part II: The Flow Near a Stagnation Point,'' Philos. Mag., 42, pp. 1433-1440) published more than sixty years ago. Thus their "new'' solution can be recovered from Howarth's known solution by simple transformations, without any additional research effort. Once this flow problem is solved, the solution of the heat transfer problem of Abbassi and Rahimi (2009, "Nonaxisymmetric Three-Dimensional Stagnation-Point Flow and Heat Transfer on a Flat Plate,'' ASME J. Fluids Eng, 131(7), p. 074501) can be calculated by a semi-analytical or by a usual numerical procedure.