Double diffusive convection of a micropolar fluid saturated in a sparsely packed porous medium

Abstract

This study examines the double diffusive convection of a sparsely packed micropolar fluid-saturated porous medium by using a linear stability analysis. The Darcy-Brinkman-Forchheimer model is employed for the porous fluid layer. The stability criterion is sought analytically with the simple free-free, iso-thermal, and iso-solutal boundary conditions. The dependence of stationary or oscillatory convection on the porous parameter, Lewis number, solutal Rayleigh number, and parameters involved in micropolar fluids is drawn and discussed. The results show that the critical wave number is found to be insensitive to the variation of governing parameters except for the porous parameter. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.