A Study on Heat Transfer in a Second-Grade Fluid Through a Porous Medium with the Modified Differential Transform Method

This study investigates the boundary-layer flow and heat transfer characteristics in a second-grade fluid through a porous medium. The similarity transformation for the governing equations gives a system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations which are analytically solved by the differential transform method (DTM) and the DTM-Pade. The DTM-Pade is a combination of the DTM and the Pade approximant. The convergence analysis elucidates that the DTM does not give accurate results for large values of independent variables. Hence the DTM is not applicable for the solution of boundary-layer flow problems having boundary conditions at infinity. Comparison between the solutions obtained by the DTM and the DTM-PadE with numerical solution (fourth-order Runge-Kutta with shooting method) illustrates that the DTM-PadE is the most effective method for solving the problems that have boundary conditions at infinity. (C) 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.