Influence of variable heat flux on natural convection along a corrugated wall in porous media

摘要

In this work the coupled non-linear partial differential equations, governing the free convection from a wavy vertical wall under a power law heat flux condition, are solved numerically. For both Darcy and Forchheimer extended non-Darcy models, a wavy to flat surface transformation is applied and the governing equations are reduced to boundary layer equations. A finite difference scheme based on the Keller Sox approach has been used in conjunction with a block tri-diagonal solver for obtaining the solution. Detailed simulations are carried out to investigate the effect of varying parameters such as power law heat flux exponent m, wavelength-amplitude ratio a and the transformed Grashof number Gr'. Both surface undulations and inertial forces increase the temperature of the vertical surface while increasing m reduces it. The wavy pattern observed in surface temperature plots, become more prominent with increasing m or a but reduces as Gr' increases.