An effective treatment of nonlinear differential equations with linear boundary conditions using the homotopy analysis method

Abstract

In this paper, we provide an effective technique to treat nonlinear differential equations with linear boundary conditions that are reduced from a nonlinear problem describing the steady-state boundary-layer flow of a micropolar fluid near the forward stagnation point of a two-dimensional plane surface. The analytical approximations with high accuracy are obtained using the homotopy analysis method, which agree well with the numerical results. This indicates the validity and great potential of the proposed method for solving nonlinear differential equations with linear boundary conditions. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.