Betelu, SantiagoFontelos, M.A.2007-08-162007-08-162001-04https://hdl.handle.net/11299/3582We investigate the spreading of thin liquid films of power-law rheology. We construct an explicit travelling wave solution and source-type similarity solutions. We show that when the nonlinearity exponent $\lambda$ for the rheology is larger than one, the governing dimensionless equation $h_t+(h^{\lambda+2}|h_{xxx}|^{\lambda-1}h_{xxx})_x=0$ admits solutions with compact support and moving fronts. We also show that the solutions have bounded energy dissipation rate.