Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2011 (2011), Article ID 169056, 16 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2011/169056
Research Article

An Optimal Homotopy Asymptotic Approach Applied to Nonlinear MHD Jeffery-Hamel Flow

Vasile Marinca1,2 and Nicolae Herişanu1,2

1Department of Mechanics and Vibration, Politehnica University of Timişoara, Bulevardul Mihai Viteazul, No. 1, 300222 Timişoara, Romania
2Department of Electromechanics and Vibration, Center for Advanced and Fundamental Technical Research, Romanian Academy, Timisoara Branch, Bulevardul Mihai Viteazul, No. 24, 300223 Timişoara, Romania

Received 3 August 2011; Accepted 22 October 2011

Academic Editor: Paulo Batista Gonçalves

Copyright © 2011 Vasile Marinca and Nicolae Herişanu. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

A simple and effective procedure is employed to propose a new analytic approximate solution for nonlinear MHD Jeffery-Hamel flow. This technique called the Optimal Homotopy Asymptotic Method (OHAM) does not depend upon any small/large parameters and provides us with a convenient way to control the convergence of the solution. The examples given in this paper lead to the conclusion that the accuracy of the obtained results is growing along with increasing the number of constants in the auxiliary function, which are determined using a computer technique. The results obtained through the proposed method are in very good agreement with the numerical results.