During the common envelope phases that follow hydrogen shell flashes in the white dwarf component of cataclysmic binaries, angular momentum and energy are transferred from the orbit to the common envelope by friction processes. The common envelope is ejected due to the frictional heating, carrying away angular momentum from the binary system. An estimate of the rate of this frictional angular momentum loss (FAML) shows that it can be the dominant angular momentum loss mechanism for cataclysmic binaries with orbital period, P(orb) approximately less than 6 hr. It is suggested that FAML is responsible for the great range in observationally deduced mass transfer rates for systems with similar orbital period.
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James R. Macdonald (1986) studied this question.