MHD flow and heat transfer of a viscous fluid over a radially stretching power-law sheet with suction/injection in a porous medium

A steady boundary layer flow and heat transfer over a radially stretching isothermal porous sheet is analyzed. Stretching is assumed to follow a radial power law, and the fluid is electrically conducting in the presence of a transverse magnetic field with a very small magnetic Reynolds number. The governing nonlinear partial differential equations are reduced to a system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations by using appropriate similarity transformations, which are solved analytically by the homotopy analysis method (HAM) and numerically by employing the shooting method with the adaptive Runge-Kutta method and Broyden’s method in the domain [0,∞). Analytical expressions for the velocity and temperature fields are derived. The influence of pertinent parameters on the velocity and temperature profiles is discussed in detail. The skin friction coefficient and the local Nusselt number are calculated as functions of several influential parameters. The results predicted by both methods are demonstrated to be in excellent agreement. Moreover, HAM results for a particular problem are also compared with exact solutions.