An iterative HAM approach for nonlinear boundary value problems in a semi-infinite domain

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an iterative approach to increase the computation efficiency of the homotopy analysis method (HAM), a analytic technique for highly nonlinear problems. By means of the Schmidt–Gram process (Arfken et al., 1985) [15], we approximate the right-hand side terms of high-order linear sub-equations by a finite set of orthonormal bases. Based on this truncation technique, we introduce the Mth-order iterative HAM by using each Mth-order approximation as a new initial guess. It is found that the iterative HAM is much more efficient than the standard HAM without truncation, as illustrated by three nonlinear differential equations defined in an infinite domain as examples. This work might greatly improve the computational efficiency of the HAM and also the Mathematica package BVPh for nonlinear BVPs.