Dual solutions for flow and radiative heat transfer of a micropolar fluid over stretching/shrinking sheet

A boundary layer analysis is presented for the flow and radiative heat transfer of an incompressible micropolar fluid over stretching/shrinking sheet with power-law surface velocity and temperature distributions. Dual solutions are analytically obtained firstly by homotopy analysis method (HAM). It is found that dual solutions not only exist for the shrinking flow as reported in the previous literatures, but also exist for the stretching flow. The special case of the first branch (K = 0, classical Newtonian fluid) is compared with the existing numerical results of stretching flow in good agreement. Our results show that both solutions are physically meaningful (two solutions are closely related to each other), unlike the results previously reported that only one solution is acceptable. Moreover, the effects of the material parameter K, the radiative Prandtl number Pr-n, the velocity exponent parameter m and the temperature exponent parameter lambda on the flow and heat transfer characteristics are analyzed in detail. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.