Copyright © 2012 R. Ellahi. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This work is concerned with the series solutions for the flow of third-grade non-Newtonian fluid with variable viscosity. Due to the nonlinear, coupled, and highly complicated nature of partial differential equations, finding an analytical solution is not an easy task. The homotopy analysis method (HAM) is employed for the presentation of series solutions. The HAM is accepted as an elegant tool for effective solutions for complicated nonlinear problems. The solutions of (Hayat et al., 2007) are developed, and their convergence has been discussed explicitly for two different models, namely, constant and variable viscosity. An error analysis is also described. In addition, the obtained results are illustrated graphically to depict the convergence region. The physical features of the pertinent parameters are presented in the form of numerical tables.