Open Access

ARTICLE

Numerical and Analytical Analysis of the Thermosolutal Convection in an Heterogeneous Porous Cavity

by K. Choukairy¹, R. Bennacer²

1 Université Hassan 1 SETTAT, Laboratoire MMII, Equipe Energétique. Ecole Nationale des sciences appliquées Khouribga
2 Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS)-Cachan - Dpt. GC/ LMT/CNRS UMR 8535

Fluid Dynamics & Materials Processing 2012, 8(2), 155-172. https://doi.org/10.3970/fdmp.2012.008.155

Abstract

This study carries the natural thermosolutal convection induced in heterogeneous porous media. The configuration considered is cartesian. The horizontal and vertical walls are submitted to different mass and heat transfer. The equations which govern this type of flow are solved numerically by using the finite volume method. The flow is considered two-dimensional and laminar. The model of Darcy and the approximation of the Boussinesq are taken into account. The parameters which control the problem are the thermal Darcy-Rayleigh number, Rt, the buoyancy ratio, N, the Lewis number, Le, the aspect ratio of the enclosure, A and the local permeability ratio, K_r. The flow fields, temperature and concentration are given for various values of the local permeability. The effects of increasing the local permeability, the thermal Darcy-Rayleigh number Rt and buoyancy ratio, N on the heat and mass transfer are discussed. These numerical results were confirmed analytically by using the parallel flow approximation. A good agreement was found between the two analytical and numerical approaches, which confirm the validity of the analytical approach in such heterogeneous domain. The flow intensity and transfer increase with the increase of the permeable heterogeneity of the domain.

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