Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
The original approach of Blasius to the solution of the differential equation now associated with his name was to develop the unknown function as a power series. Unfortunately, this series has a limited radius of convergence, so that such a representation is not valid over the whole range of interest. It is shown here that, if we work instead with a particular inverse function, this can be expanded as a power series which converges for all relevant values of the independent variable. Moreover, the number associated with the solution which is of principal physical interest can be expressed in terms of the asymptotic properties of the coefficients of this series. Exploiting this relationship, we find upper and lower bounds for this number in terms of the zeros of two particular families of polynomials.