On the boundary layer flow of a shear thinning liquid over a 2-dimensional stretching surface

Shear thinning phenomenon in inelastic non-Newtonian fluids is widely encountered in several engineering and industrial applications. In this paper, we have considered steady boundary layer flow of a special type of pseudoplastic fluid over a 2-dimensional stretching sheet. Using the Williamson fluid model, we have carried out an analytico-numerical study to investigate the effect of higher order terms in the perturbation analysis involving a non-Newtonian parameter. A number of illustrative plots of velocity components have been presented to showcase several features of this flow. It has been shown that higher order relative 26 Pallath Chandran, Nirmal C. Sacheti and Tayfour El-Bashir effects for flow over a stretching surface do not strictly exhibit the nonmonotonic features observed in stagnation point flow of pseudoplastic as well as dilatant fluids, over a stationary surface. Furthermore, the magnitude of the wall shear stress at the stretching sheet is quite sensitive to non-Newtonian parameter as well as relative order effects in the perturbation expansion. In both cases, the wall shear stress increases with increasing non-Newtonian effects of the pseudoplastic fluid. Subject Classification: 76A05, 76D10