Steady flows of non‐Newtonian fluids past a porous plate with suction or injection

Abstract

Abstract The problem of the steady flow of three classes of non‐linear fluids of the differential type past a porous plate with uniform suction or injection is studied. The flow which is studied is the counterpart of the classical ‘asymptotic suction’ problem, within the context of the non‐Newtonian fluid models. The non‐linear differential equations resulting from the balance of momentum and mass, coupled with suitable boundary conditions, are solved numerically either by a finite difference method or by a collocation method with a B‐spline function basis. The manner in which the various material parameters affect the structure of the boundary layer is delineated. The issue of paucity of boundary conditions for general non‐linear fluids of the differential type, and a method for augmenting the boundary conditions for a certain class of flow problems, is illustrated. A comparison is made of the numerical solutions with the solutions from a regular perturbation approach, as well as a singular perturbation.