Series solutions of unsteady three-dimensional MHD flow and heat transfer in the boundary layer over an impulsively stretching plate

In this paper, the unsteady boundary-layer flow and heat transfer in an incompressible viscous electrically conducting fluid, caused by an impulsive stretching of the surface in two lateral directions and by suddenly increasing the surface temperature from that of surrounding fluid are studied analytically. By using the homotopy analysis method, the accurate series solutions are obtained which are uniformly valid for all dimensionless time in the whole spatial region 0 <= eta < infinity. To the best of our knowledge, such kind of solutions have not been reported. (c) 2006 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.