The onset of convection in an anisotropic porous layer using a thermal non-equilibrium model

Abstract

The stability of a horizontal fluid saturated anisotropic porous layer heated from below and cooled from above is examined analytically when the solid and fluid phases are not in local thermal equilibrium. Darcy model with anisotropic permeability is employed to describe the flow and a two-field model is used for energy equation each representing the solid and fluid phases separately. The linear stability theory is implemented to compute the critical Rayleigh number and the corresponding wavenumber for the onset of convective motion. The effect of thermal non-equilibrium and anisotropy in both mechanical and thermal properties of the porous medium on the onset of convection is discussed. Besides, asymptotic analysis for both very small and large values of the interphase heat transfer coefficient is also presented. An excellent agreement is found between the exact and asymptotic solutions. Some known results, which correspond to thermal equilibrium and isotropic porous medium, are recovered in limiting cases. © Springer 2005.