Melting heat transfer in the stagnation-point flow of an upper-convected Maxwell (UCM) fluid past a stretching sheet

Abstract

The steady laminar boundary layer flow and heat transfer past a stretching sheet arre considered. Upper-convected Maxwell (UCM) fluid is treated as a rheological model. The resulting nonlinear differential system is solved by homotopy analysis method (HAM). The influence of melting parameter (M), Prandtl number (Pr), Deborah number (β) and stretching ratio (A = a/c) on the velocity and temperature profiles is thoroughly examined. It is noticed that fields are effected appreciably with the variation of parameters. Furthermore, it is seen that the local Nusselt number is a decreasing function of melting parameter. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.