Analytical solutions of the boundary layer flow of power-law fluid over a power-law stretching surface

This article discusses analytical solutions for a nonlinear problem arising in the boundary layer flow of power-law fluid over a power-law stretching surface. Using perturbation method analytical solution is presented for linear stretching surface. This solution covers large range of shear thinning and shear thickening fluids and matches excellently with the numerical solution. Furthermore, some new exact solutions are found for particular combination of m (power-law stretching index) and n (power-law fluid index). This leads to generalize the case of linear stretching to nonlinear stretching surface. The effects of fluid index n on the boundary layer thickness and the skin friction for nonlinear stretching surface is analyzed and discussed. It is observed that the boundary layer thickness and the skin friction coefficient increase as non-linear parameter n decreases. This study gives a new dimension to obtain analytical solutions asymptotically for highly nonlinear problems which to the best of our knowledge has not been examined so far. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.