An analysis is carried out to study the unsteady two-dimensional Powell–Eyring flow and
heat transfer to a laminar liquid film from a horizontal stretching surface in the presence of internal
heat generation. The flow of a thin fluid film and subsequent heat transfer from the stretching
surface is investigated with the aid of a similarity transformation. The transformation enables to
reduce the unsteady boundary layer equations to a system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations.
A numerical solution of the resulting nonlinear differential equations is found by using an efficient
Chebyshev finite difference method. A comparison of numerical results is made with the earlier
published results for limiting cases. The effects of the governing parameters on the flow and thermal
fields are thoroughly examined and discussed.