2 results
The effect of a weak heterogeneity of a porous medium on natural convection
- Carol Braester, Peter Vadasz
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- Journal:
- Journal of Fluid Mechanics / Volume 254 / September 1993
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 26 April 2006, pp. 345-362
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The results of an investigation on the effect of a weak heterogeneity of a porous medium on natural convection are presented. A medium heterogeneity is represented by spatial variations of the permeability and of the effective thermal conductivity. As a general rule the existence of horizontal thermal gradients in heterogeneous porous media provides a sufficient condition for the occurrence of natural convection. The implications of this condition are investigated for horizontal layers or rectangular domains subject to isothermal top and bottom boundary conditions. Results lead to a restriction on the classes of thermal conductivity functions which allow a motionless solution. Analytical solutions for rectangular weak heterogeneous porous domains heated from below, consistent with a basic motionless solution, are obtained by applying the weak nonlinear theory. The amplitude of the convection is obtained from an ordinary non-homogeneous differential equation, with a forcing term representative of the medium heterogeneity with respect to the effective thermal conductivity. A smooth transition through the critical Rayleigh number is obtained, thus removing a bifurcation which usually appears in homogeneous domains with perfect boundaries, at the critical value of the Rayleigh number. Within a certain range of slightly supercritical Rayleigh numbers, a symmetric thermal conductivity function is shown to reinforce a symmetrical flow while antisymmetric functions favour an antisymmetric flow. Except for the higher-order solutions, the weak heterogeneity with respect to permeability plays a relatively passive role and does not affect the solutions at the leading order. In contrast, the weak heterogeneity with respect to the effective thermal conductivity does have a significant effect on the resulting flow pattern.
Coriolis effect on gravity-driven convection in a rotating porous layer heated from below
- PETER VADASZ
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- Journal:
- Journal of Fluid Mechanics / Volume 376 / 10 December 1998
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 10 December 1998, pp. 351-375
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Linear stability and weak nonlinear theories are used to investigate analytically the Coriolis effect on three-dimensional gravity-driven convection in a rotating porous layer heated from below. Major differences as well as similarities with the corresponding problem in pure fluids (non-porous domains) are particularly highlighted. As such, it is found that, in contrast to the problem in pure fluids, overstable convection in porous media is not limited to a particular domain of Prandtl number values (in pure fluids the necessary condition is Pr<1). Moreover, it is also established that in the porous-media problem the critical wavenumber in the plane containing the streamlines for stationary convection is not identical to the critical wavenumber associated with convection without rotation, and is therefore not independent of rotation, a result which is quite distinct from the corresponding pure-fluids problem. Nevertheless it is evident that in porous media, just as in the case of pure fluids subject to rotation and heated from below, the viscosity at high rotation rates has a destabilizing effect on the onset of stationary convection, i.e. the higher the viscosity the less stable the fluid. Finite-amplitude results obtained by using a weak nonlinear analysis provide differential equations for the amplitude, corresponding to both stationary and overstable convection. These amplitude equations permit one to identify from the post-transient conditions that the fluid is subject to a pitchfork bifurcation in the stationary convection case and to a Hopf bifurcation associated with the overstable convection. Heat transfer results were evaluated from the amplitude solution and are presented in terms of Nusselt number for both stationary and overstable convection. They show that rotation has in general a retarding effect on convective heat transfer, except for a narrow region of small values of the parameter containing the Prandtl number where rotation enhances the heat transfer associated with overstable convection.