Flow of a power-law fluid over a rotating disk revisited

The von Kármán swirling flow due to a rotating disk admits similarity solutions even in the case of a power-law fluid. The non-linearities introduced by the rheological model may deteriorate the numerical solutions of the resulting set of ordinary differential equations with increasing departure from Newtonian behaviour. The reliability of earlier numerical results are nevertheless approved, except for highly shear-thinning fluids (the power-law index n<0.5) for which a severe ambiguity in the solutions is revealed and ascribed to a breakdown of the boundary layer approximation. This phenomenon makes it impossible to determine the pumping action of the disk. For highly shear-thickening fluids, on the other hand, new accurate results are provided beyond the parameter range considered earlier, i.e. for 1.5<n⩽2.0.