Taylor Series Solution of the Electrohydrodynamic Flow Equation

Abstract

In this work, the electrohydrodynamic flow equation of a fluid in an ion drag configuration in a circular cylindrical conduit is considered. The differential equation of the problem is a highly nonlinear and singular boundary value problem (BVP). An analytical solution of the problem is presented using the differential transform method (DTM). In this method, the differential equation and related boundary conditions transformed into a recurrence set of equations and at the end, the coefficients of Taylor series are calculated based on the solution of this set of equations. DTM results are compared with the numerical solution of the problem and an excellent accuracy is observed. It showed that the proposed method overcame the nonlinearity and singularity of the problem without any need to restrict assumptions or linearization. Most of the scientific problems and engineering phenomena are usually defined based on the nonlinear differential equations of both initial value problems (IVP) and boundary value problems (BVP). It is important to remember that except a limited number of these problems, finding exact analytical solution is difficult. Therefore, researchers use semi-analytical techniques and numerical methods. The semi-analytical methods such as the perturbation method (PM), Adomian decomposition method (ADM), variational iteration method (VIM), homotopy perturbation method (HPM), homotopy analysis method (HAM), and differential transform method (DTM) are useful mathematical ones, which present the analytical solutions for nonlinear differential equations. In this paper, solution of electrohydrodynamic flow equation of a fluid in an ion drag configuration in a circular cylindrical conduit is presented using DTM. Already, the electrohydrodynamic flow of a fluid and its governing equations is considered (1). The electrohydrodynamic flow is important in analysis of the flow meters, accelerators, pumps and magnetohydrodynamic generators. The differential equation of the problem is the nonlinear singular boundary value problem. 2 2