Unstable Forced Convection in a Plane Porous Channel With Variable-Viscosity Dissipation

Abstract

Fully developed and stationary forced convection in a plane-parallel porous channel is analyzed. The boundary walls are modeled as impermeable and subject to external heat transfer. Different Biot numbers are defined at the two boundary planes. It is shown that the combined effects of temperature-dependent viscosity and viscous heating may induce flow instability. The instability takes place at the lowest parametric singularity of the basic flow solution. The linear stability analysis is carried out analytically for the longitudinal modes and numerically for general oblique modes. It is shown that longitudinal modes with vanishingly small wave number are selected at the onset of instability.