Boundary layer flow analysis of a class of shear thickening fluids

Inelastic fluids, both shear thickening and shear thinning, are encountered in a number of engineering applications. In such fluids, the relationships between the shear stress and the rate of shear become vitally important in experimental as well as theoretical studies. In this paper, we have considered a two-dimensional steady boundary layer flow of a particular type of shear thickening fluid flowing past a flat plate. Using a specific rheological model for this fluid, we have investigated the combined effect of retaining higher order terms in the constitutive equation as well as perturbation expansions of the physical variables. The boundary layer flow, shown to be governed by a third order nonlinear ODE, has been solved by a perturbation method followed by numerical integration. Our focus in this study is to investigate the comparative effects of the various order terms in the perturbation expansions. It is shown that the retention of higher order terms, generally neglected in similar studies, is important to correctly predict the flow features.