Natural convection due to solar radiation from a vertical plate embedded in a porous medium with variable porosity

摘要

Natural convection boundary-layer due to solar radiation flow of a Newtonian absorbing fluid over a semi-infinite, ideally transparent, vertical flat plate embedded in a porous medium having a variable porosity distribution is considered. Continuum equations governing this boundary-layer flow and heat transfer situation are derived taking into consideration the Boussinesq approximation and the presence of an applied incident radiation flux. To account for the heat loss from the plate surface, a convective-type boundary condition is employed there. The obtained equations and boundary conditions are transformed using a nonsimilarity transformation and solved numerically by an implicit iterative finite-difference scheme. Selected graphical results for the velocity and temperature fields as well as the boundary friction and Nusselt number are presented and discussed.