Convective transport in a porous medium layer saturated with a Maxwell nanofluid

Abstract

A linear and weakly non-linear stability analys is has been carried out to study the onset of convection in a horizontal layer of a porous medium saturated with a Maxwell nanofluid. To simulate the momentum equation in porous media, a modified Darcy–Maxwell nanofluid model incorporating the effects of Brownian motion and thermophoresis has been used. A Galerkin method has been employed to investigate the stationary and oscillatory convections; the stability boundaries for these cases are approximated by simple and useful analytical expressions. The stability of the system is investigated by varying various parameters viz., nanoparticle concentration Rayleigh number, Lewis number, modified diffusivity ratio, porosity, thermal capacity ratio, viscosity ratio, conductivity ratio, Vadász number and relaxation parameter. A representation of Fourier series method has been used to study the heat and mass transport on the non-linear stability analysis. The effect of transient heat and mass transport on various parameters is also studied. It is found that for stationary convection Lewis number, viscosity ratio and conductivity ratio have a stabilizing effect while nanoparticle concentration Rayleigh number Rn destabilizes the system. For oscillatory convection we observe that the conductivity ratio stabilizes the system whereas nanoparticle concentration Rayleigh number, Lewis number, Vadász number and relaxation parameter destabilize the system. The viscosity ratio increases the thermal Rayleigh number for oscillatory convection initially thus delaying the onset of convection and later decreases thus advancing the onset of convection hence showing a dual effect. For steady finite amplitude motions, the heat and mass transport decreases with an increase in the values of nanoparticle concentration Rayleigh number, Lewis number, viscosity ratio and conductivity ratio. The mass transport increases with an increase in Vadász number and relaxation parameter. We also study the effect of time on transient Nusselt number and Sherwood number which are found to be oscillatory when time is small. However, when time becomes very large both the transient Nusselt and Sherwood values approach to their steady state values. © 2014