Unsteady flow and heat transfer of porous media sandwiched between viscous fluids

Abstract

The problem of unsteady oscillatory flow and heat transfer of porous media sandwiched between viscous fluids has been considered through a horizontal channel with isothermal wall temperatures. The flow in the porous medium is modeled using the Brinkman equation. The governing partial differential equations are transformed to ordinary differential equations by collecting the non-periodic and periodic terms. Closed-form solutions for each region are found after applying the boundary and interface conditions. The influence of physical parameters, such as the porous parameter, the frequency parameter, the periodic frequency parameter, the viscosity ratios, the conductivity ratios, and the Prandtl number, on the velocity and temperature fields is computed numerically and presented graphically. In addition, the numerical values of the Nusselt number at the top and bottom walls are derived and tabulated. © 2010 Shanghai University and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.