The impact of imperfect heat transfer on the convective instability of a thermal boundary layer in a porous media

We consider convective instability in a deep porous medium cooled from above with a linearised thermal exchange at the upper surface, thus determining the impact of using a Robin boundary condition, in contrast to previous previous studies using a Dirichlet boundary condition. With the linearised su...

पूर्ण विवरण

ग्रंथसूची विवरण
मुख्य लेखकों: Hitchen, J, Wells, A
स्वरूप: Journal article
प्रकाशित: Cambridge University Press 2016
_version_ 1826284180365901824
author Hitchen, J
Wells, A
author_facet Hitchen, J
Wells, A
author_sort Hitchen, J
collection OXFORD
description We consider convective instability in a deep porous medium cooled from above with a linearised thermal exchange at the upper surface, thus determining the impact of using a Robin boundary condition, in contrast to previous previous studies using a Dirichlet boundary condition. With the linearised surface exchange, the thermal flux out of the porous layer depends linearly on the temperature difference between the effective temperature of a heat sink at the upper boundary and the temperature at the surface of the porous layer. The rate of this exchange is characterised by a dimensionless Biot number, Bi, determined by the effective thermal conductivity of exchange with the heat sink relative to the physical thermal conductivity of the porous layer. For a given temperature difference between the heat sink at the upper boundary and deep in the porous medium, we find that imperfectly cooled layers with finite Biot numbers are more stable to convective instabilities than perfectly cooled layers which have large, effectively infinite Biot numbers. Two regimes of behaviour were determined with contrasting stability behaviour and characteristic scales. When the Biot number is large the near-perfect heat transfer produces small corrections of order 1/Bi to the perfectly conducting behaviour found when the Biot number is infinite. In the insulating limit as the Biot number approaches zero, a different behaviour was found with significantly larger scales for the critical wavelength and depth of convection both scaling proportional to 1/ √ Bi
first_indexed 2024-03-07T01:10:01Z
format Journal article
id oxford-uuid:8cab5d6b-d392-4b1d-a3b3-3e5a1e13e3b9
institution University of Oxford
last_indexed 2024-03-07T01:10:01Z
publishDate 2016
publisher Cambridge University Press
record_format dspace
spelling oxford-uuid:8cab5d6b-d392-4b1d-a3b3-3e5a1e13e3b92022-03-26T22:46:05ZThe impact of imperfect heat transfer on the convective instability of a thermal boundary layer in a porous mediaJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:8cab5d6b-d392-4b1d-a3b3-3e5a1e13e3b9Symplectic Elements at OxfordCambridge University Press2016Hitchen, JWells, AWe consider convective instability in a deep porous medium cooled from above with a linearised thermal exchange at the upper surface, thus determining the impact of using a Robin boundary condition, in contrast to previous previous studies using a Dirichlet boundary condition. With the linearised surface exchange, the thermal flux out of the porous layer depends linearly on the temperature difference between the effective temperature of a heat sink at the upper boundary and the temperature at the surface of the porous layer. The rate of this exchange is characterised by a dimensionless Biot number, Bi, determined by the effective thermal conductivity of exchange with the heat sink relative to the physical thermal conductivity of the porous layer. For a given temperature difference between the heat sink at the upper boundary and deep in the porous medium, we find that imperfectly cooled layers with finite Biot numbers are more stable to convective instabilities than perfectly cooled layers which have large, effectively infinite Biot numbers. Two regimes of behaviour were determined with contrasting stability behaviour and characteristic scales. When the Biot number is large the near-perfect heat transfer produces small corrections of order 1/Bi to the perfectly conducting behaviour found when the Biot number is infinite. In the insulating limit as the Biot number approaches zero, a different behaviour was found with significantly larger scales for the critical wavelength and depth of convection both scaling proportional to 1/ √ Bi
spellingShingle Hitchen, J
Wells, A
The impact of imperfect heat transfer on the convective instability of a thermal boundary layer in a porous media
title The impact of imperfect heat transfer on the convective instability of a thermal boundary layer in a porous media
title_full The impact of imperfect heat transfer on the convective instability of a thermal boundary layer in a porous media
title_fullStr The impact of imperfect heat transfer on the convective instability of a thermal boundary layer in a porous media
title_full_unstemmed The impact of imperfect heat transfer on the convective instability of a thermal boundary layer in a porous media
title_short The impact of imperfect heat transfer on the convective instability of a thermal boundary layer in a porous media
title_sort impact of imperfect heat transfer on the convective instability of a thermal boundary layer in a porous media
work_keys_str_mv AT hitchenj theimpactofimperfectheattransferontheconvectiveinstabilityofathermalboundarylayerinaporousmedia
AT wellsa theimpactofimperfectheattransferontheconvectiveinstabilityofathermalboundarylayerinaporousmedia
AT hitchenj impactofimperfectheattransferontheconvectiveinstabilityofathermalboundarylayerinaporousmedia
AT wellsa impactofimperfectheattransferontheconvectiveinstabilityofathermalboundarylayerinaporousmedia