Sakiadis Flow of Harris Fluids: a Series-Solution

Abstract

In the present work, Sakiadis flow of a shear-thinning fluid obeying Harris rheological model is investigated analytically. Assuming that the flow is occurring at high Reynolds number, use will be made of the boundary layer theory to simplify the equations of motion. The equations so obtained are then reduced to a single fourth-order ODE using a suitable similarity variable. The homotopy analysis method (HAM) is used to solve the fourth-order nonlinear equation so obtained using the Mathematica software. The material parameters appearing in the Harris model are shown to be responsible for the lack of a self-similar solution, but fortunately the flow is shown to render itself to a local similarity solution. The results show that for the Harris model to represent shear-thinning fluids, the sign and magnitude of the material parameters appearing in this tricky rheological model should be carefully selected.