Abstract

Boundary layer flow of a micropolar fluid past a permeable shrinking sheet with second-order slip velocity is studied in this paper. The solution is an exact solution of the Navier–Stokes and microrotation equations. Similarity equations are obtained through the application of similarity transformation techniques. Numerical techniques are used to solve the similarity equations for different values of the shrinking parameter, suction parameter, material parameter and second-order slip parameters. It is shown that the solution has two branches (upper and lower) in a certain range of the parameters. A stability analysis has been also performed to show that the first (upper branch) solutions are stable and physically realizable, while the second (lower branch) solutions are not stable and, therefore, not physically possible. The effects of the governing parameters on the skin friction, velocity and microrotation distribution are presented graphically and discussed. These results clearly show that the second order slip flow model is necessary to predict the flow characteristics accurately.