MHD flow of Powell–Eyring fluid over a rotating disk

•Flow velocity in radial and axial direction declines but increase in tangential direction with increase in non-Newtonian Powell–Eyring fluid parameter N.•Flow velocity in radial and axial direction rises while revert pattern is followed by tangential velocity due to the increase in non-Newtonian Powell–Eyring fluid parameter L.•Increase in Re leads to the increase in radial and axial flow velocity, adversely affecting tangential velocity.•The presence of magnetic field in the fluid declines the flow velocity in all directions.

This paper investigates the problem of steady, laminar, flow of an incompressible, non-Newtonian Powell–Eyring fluid. The flow is induced over a rotating disk and flowing under the influence of transverse magnetic field. The behavior of Powell–Eyring fluid is characterized by the constitutive equation due to Powell and Eyring. Reduction from nonlinear partial differential equation to the ordinary differential equation has been made by employing similarity transformation. Resulting nonlinear analysis is carried out for series solution by using homotopy analysis method (HAM). The influences of relevant Powell–Eyring fluid parameters, Reynolds number and magnetic field parameter on the velocity, pressure and shear stress which are of the chief physical interest are analyzed through graphical outcomes. The present results are compared with the existing limiting solutions showing very good agreement with each other. For the considered flow the present paper also correspondingly illuminates the validity and power of the HAM-based Mathematica package i.e. optimized HAM (BVPh 2.0) available online (http://numericaltank.sjtu.edu.cn/BVPh.htm).