Assessment of homotopy analysis method and homotopy perturbation method in non-linear heat transfer equation

Abstract

Two new analytical methods to solve nonlinear heat transfer equations are homotopy perturbation method and homotopy analysis method. Here, homotopy analysis method, which gives us a vast freedom to choose the answer type, is applied to solve nonlinear heat transfer differential equations and analytical results are compared with those of HPM and the numerical results. In this study, the procedure of HAM is applied to two cases in different ways according to the physics of the target problem. Comparing the two methods, our attention is focused on the results accuracy; and applicability of different methods in many cases with different limitation is studied. In the two examples of this paper, the effect of small parameter increaser on the accuracy of the analytical results of two methods also has been studied. The first differential equation is the modeling equation of a cooling lumped system with combined convection and radiation. The second one is the modeling equation of heat transfer with conduction in a slab of thermal dependent conductivity. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.