Transport in Porous Media, Vol.88, No.1, 149-167, 2011
Double-Diffusive Natural Convection Flows with Thermosolutal Symmetry in Porous Media in the Presence of the Soret-Dufour Effects
The double-diffusive natural convection past a vertical plate embedded in a fluid-saturated porous medium is considered in the boundary-layer and Boussinesq approximations. It is assumed that the Soret-Dufour cross-diffusion effects are significant. The heat and mass fluxes on the plate are prescribed as functions of the surface coordinate x. The general similarity reduction of the problem for power-law and exponential variation of the wall fluxes is given. In the case of thermosolutal symmetry, when the similar temperature and concentration fields become coincident, exact analytical as well as numerical solutions are reported and discussed in some detail. For the flows without thermosolutal symmetry, the final similarity equations have been solved numerically, by paying attention to the influence of the Soret and Dufour numbers on the departure from thermosolutal symmetry. The reported results focus on the wall temperatures and concentrations, whose reciprocals are Nusselt and Sherwood numbers, respectively.
Keywords:Natural convection;Vertical surface;Double diffusion;Prescribed fluxes;Self-similarity;Thermosolutal symmetry;Cross-diffusion effects;Porous media