This is the third volume in a four-part series on Fluid Dynamics: PART 1: Classical Fluid Dynamics PART 2: Asymptotic Problems of Fluid Dynamics PART 3: Boundary Layers PART 4: Hydrodynamic Stability Theory The series is designed to give a comprehensive and coherent description of fluid dynamics, starting with chapters on classical theory suitable for an introductory undergraduate lecture course, and then progressing through more advanced material up to the level of modern research in the field. The notion of the boundary layer was introduced by Prandtl (1904) to describe thin viscous layers that form on a rigid body surface in high-Reynolds-number flows. Part 3 of this series begins with the classical theory of the boundary-layer flows, including the Blasius boundary layer on a flat plate and the Falkner-Skan solutions for the boundary layer on a wedge surface. However, the main focus is on recent results of the theory that have not been presented in texbooks before. These are based on the so-called "triple-deck theory" that have proved to be invaluable in describing various fluid-dynamic phenomena, including the boundary-layer separation from a rigid body surface.

Anatoly I. Ruban is Professor and Chair in Applied Mathematics and Mathematical Physics at the Imperial College London. He was formerly Professor of Computational Fluid Dynamics in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Manchester, from 1995 to 2008. In 1991 he received the Doctor of Science degree in Physics and Mathematics. In Moscow, he served as Head of the Gas Dynamics Department in the Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute in Moscow from 1978-1995 after earning his PhD in Fluid Mechanics in 1977.