A reliable treatment of the homotopy analysis method for viscous flow over a non-linearly stretching sheet in presence of a chemical reaction and under influence of a magnetic field

The similarity solution for the steady two-dimensional flow of an incompressible viscous and electrically conducting fluid over a non-linearly semi-infinite stretching sheet in the presence of a chemical reaction and under the influence of a magnetic field gives a system of non-linear ordinary differential equations. These non-linear differential equations are analytically solved by applying a newly developed method, namely the Homotopy Analysis Method (HAM). The analytic solutions of the system of non-linear differential equations are constructed in the series form. The convergence of the obtained series solutions is carefully analyzed. Graphical results are presented to investigate the influence of the Schmidt number, magnetic parameter and chemical reaction parameter on the velocity and concentration fields. It is noted that the behavior of the HAM solution for concentration profiles is in good agreement with the numerical solution given in reference [A. Raptis, C. Perdikis, Int. J. Nonlinear Mech. 41, 527 (2006)].