Journal of Porous Media

Numerical Study of Thermosolutal Convection in Anisotropic Porous Media Subject to Cross-Fluxes of Heat and Mass

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we present a numerical study of an anisotropic porous medium where we analyze double-diffusive natural convection in a square cavity filled with porous media that is subject to uniform heat flux along vertical walls and a solutal flux along horizontal surfaces. The formulation of the problem is based on the Darcy−Brinkman model. The density variation of the saturating fluid is taken into account by the Boussinesq approximation. The system of the coupled equations is solved by the classic finite volume method.
The effect of anisotropy in permeability is analyzed through the terms of the average heat and mass transfer on the vertical and horizontal walls of the cavity, respectively. We realized that the results depend on several characteristic parameters, and general correlations are established for the calculation of heat and mass transfer, according to various studied parameters. According to the buoyancy ratio, we found three distinct regimes: thermal convective, diffusive, and intermediate. The transition from one regime to another is strongly affected by the permeability anisotropy. The effects of porous thermal Rayleigh and Lewis numbers are investigated for different values of permeability ratio characteristic of the anisotropy of porous media.