Studies on convective instability in a porous medium using a thermal non equilibrium model

Abstract

In recent years, interest in fundamental studies of thermal convection in porous media newlinehas significantly increased due to its presence in diverse engineering applications in the fields such as thermal insulation technology, pebble bed nuclear reactors, cooling of electronic equipment, binary alloy solidification and so on. These problems naturally involve a certain newlinedegree of local thermal non-equilibrium (LTNE) phenomenon. In the present thesis, the effect of LTNE on linear and/or weakly nonlinear thermal convection in a porous medium is investigated under the influence of anisotropy of the medium, temperature dependent viscosity, density maximum, non-uniform basic temperature gradients, vertical heterogeneity of permeability, and external constraint of rotation as well as magnetic field.