The Effect of Vertical Throughflow on Thermal Instability in a Porous Medium Layer Saturated by a Nanofluid: A Revised Model

Abstract

The model developed in our previous paper (Nield and Kuznetsov, 2011, “The Effect of Vertical Throughflow on Thermal Instability in a Porous Medium Layer Saturated by a Nanofluid,â€‌ Transp. Porous Media, 87(3), pp. 765–775) is now revised to accommodate a more realistic boundary condition on the nanoparticle volume fraction. The new boundary condition postulates zero nanoparticle flux through the boundaries. We established that in the new model, oscillatory instability is impossible. We also established that the critical Rayleigh number depends on three dimensionless parameters, and we derived these three parameters from the governing equations. We also briefly investigated the major trends.