Abstract
This article addresses the flow of a thixotropic liquid with nanomaterials due to a stretching sheet of variable thickness. The stimulus effects of the heat source/sink and first-order chemical reaction are retained. Convective conditions of heat and mass transfer are also considered at the boundary. Unlike the classical consideration, the linear thermal radiation aspect is examined. The influence of emergent flow, heat and mass parameters on velocity, concentration and temperature fields are shown graphically. It is also noted that the velocity of the fluid significantly favours the non-Newtonian parameters. For higher values of radiation and heat source/sink parameter, the temperature rises. Moreover, a novel investigation on heat and mass transfer rates subject to nanomaterials (i.e. Brownian motion and thermophoresis) in the liquid has been carried out. Nonlinear systems are solved by the optimal homotopy analysis method (OHAM). Convergence analysis has been executed and the optimal values are computed. The main advantage of the proposed technique is that it can be directly utilised in highly nonlinear systems without using discretisation, linearisation and round-off errors. The table shows the results of the error analysis.