SIMILARITY SOLUTIONS OF 3-DIMENSIONAL BOUNDARY-LAYER EQUATIONS OF NON-NEWTONIAN FLUIDS

An analysis of possibility of finding similarity solutions to the three-dimensional, steady, incompressible, boundary layer equations in rectangular co-ordinates for a power law fluid has been discussed in the literature. In the present paper a similarity analysis is made of the steady, three-dimensional, incompressible, laminar, boundary layer flow of all time independent non-Newtonian fluids. The important conclusion drawn from this analysis is that for a non-Newtonian fluid of any model, a similarity solution exists for the fluid for which shearing stress and rate of strain can be related by an arbitrary continuous function.