Conjugate free convection along a thin vertical plate with internal nonuniform heat generation in a porous medium F, Méndez, C. Trevifia, I. Pop, A. Lifién List of symbols ‘A constant in Eq. (41) B constant defined in Eq. (37) G\(s) function defined in Eq. (47) C. ~specific heat of the strip Ff non-dimensional reduced stream function defined in Eq, (9) acceleration due to gravity ht thickness of the strip k thermal conductivity K L permeability of the porous medium L length of the strip 1c _ total mass flow rate defined in Eq, (12) ‘m;(3) non-dimensional reduced mass flow rate of the fiuid Ra modified Rayleigh number based on AT Ra. modified Rayleigh number based on AT- defined in Eq, (10) 5 parameter associated with the distribution of the internal heat source in the strip Siinternal heat source T temperature Tx. ambient temperature u,v velocity components along x and y-axes 2 non-dimensional normal coordinate of the strip defined in Eq. (9) Abstract The steady state heat transfer characteristics of a thin vertical strip with internal heat generation placed in a porous medium is studied in this work. The non-dimen- sional temperature distribution in the strip is obtained as a function of the intensity and distribution of the internal heat sources. Both the thermally thin as the thick wall approximations are considered in this paper. The mass flow rate of fluid induced by heating the strip decreases as, the longitudinal heat conduction effects along the strip decreases. Greek symbols % heat conduction parameter 2 thermal diffusivity of the fluid 2, thermal diffusivity of the strip Bi coefficient of thermal expansion 3 boundary-layer thickness AT. temperature difference across the fluid layer AT, characteristic temperature difference defined in Bq. (11) non-dimensional internal heat generation function defined in Eq. (9) © aspect ratio of the strip n non-similarity variable defined in Eq. (9) y kinematic viscosity p density € — non-similarity variable defined in Eq. (31) 6 non-dimensional temperature function % non-dimensional longitudinal coordinate defined in Eq. (9) W dimensional stream function Subscripts f fiuid solid strip w condition on the strip ce ambient condition Superscript averaged non-dimensional temperature 1 Introduction Transport processes in porous media are encountered in a broad range of scientific and engineering problems asso- ciated with the petroleum and geothermal industries, fibre and granular insulation materials, storage of radioactive nuclear waste materials, packed-bed chemical reactors and transpiration cooling. Literature concerning convective flow in porous media is abundant. Representative studies in this area may be found in the recent books by Ingham and Pop [1], Nield and Bejan [2] and Vafai [3]. It is well established that convective heat transfer depends on theform of the thermal boundary conditions imposed, with it being usual to take either a prescribed temperature or a prescribed heat flux on the bounding surface. However, there are many problems of practical importance where the surface conditions cannot be specified so simply and these then depend strongly on the convective heat transfer within the bounding solid wall. In these situations free or mixed convection must then be studied as a mixed prob- Tem, termed a conjugate problem, where there is an teraction between the convective flow in the fluid and the heat conduction within the solid wal. In particular, papers by Bejan and Anderson [4], Vynnycky and Kimura [5, 6], Pop and Merkin [7], Pop et al. [8], Lesnic et al. [9], Hig ‘uera and Pop [10], Higuera [11] and Shu and Pop [12-14] have elucidated the effects of the appropriate conjugate parameters on the heat conduction in the solid walls coupled with natural or mixed convection flows adjacent to vertical and horizontal flat surfaces embedded in a fluid-saturated porous medium. The early theoretical work ‘of conjugate free convection in porous media has been recently reviewed by Kimura et al. [15]. However, in most of these studies the authors have provided analytical or computed solutions to the governing equations by as- suming a thin heated plate so that conduction within the plate is one-dimensional. In view of this observation, conjugate heat transfer for the most general case, when the heated vertical plate is assumed to be of both finite thickness and length, corresponding to the presence of axial conduction effects, has yet to be treated fully. The present paper considers in detail the temperature distri- bution in a thin vertical flat plate (strip) wit i internal heat generation and embedded in a flu porous medium. We tackle this topic using both numerical and analytical methods. The non-dimensional temperature distribution in the solid plate is obtained as a function of, the following parameters: (a) the intensity and distribution of the internal heat sources, (b) the aspect ratio of the plate and (c) the longitudinal heat conductance of the plate. The problem and solution method is analogous to that of Méndez. and Trevitio [16] for a thin vertical plate im- mersed in a viscous (non-porous) incompressible fluid, 2 Basic equations ‘The physical model and a suitable coordinate system are given in Fig. 1. We consider the free convection boundary- layer flow induced by a vertical heated conducting strip of, length L and thickness h, which is totally embedded in a vertical flat plate and placed in a fluid-saturated porous medium, Itis assumed that the right face of the strip is at the temperature T., whilst the left upper and lower walls are supposed to be adiabatic. This condition is satisfied if the ratio of the thermal conductivity of the fiat plate to the thermal conductivity of the strip is much smaller than unity, see for example Sathe and Joshi [17]. Under the Darcy-Boussinesq and boundary-layer approximations, the free convection flow is described by the equation of continuity au ov ay 0 a) x oF ae seca Be a ee SEH Hs “ ae termat neat |— +H ‘generation S a Fig. 1. Physical model and the coordinate system Darey’s law x w= 1) Q) a Ty oT; eT a 3 vi °) and the equation of heat wansfr inside the sold pate merceeas Ss (e's) “ne . where the physical quantities in these equations are de- scribed in the Nomenclature. Equations (1)-(4) are subject to the following boundary conditions: SO ee HO T= Ty Wm hae ony=z=0 (5) on, a a (6) on, o a eT 0 wx =Oand x=L ”) u+0, Ty> Tx asy 00 (8) We introduce now the following non-dimensional variables x aay oe eee ~ Ral2ya L BEL TW eRe ogy Ty = Toc T.- Teo s a » = Oe 6where AT; is the characteristic temperature to be defined later, is the stream function which is defined as u = d))/0y and y= —0y//0x;, Ra is the modified Rayleigh number for the porous medium and S is the averaged volumetric heat production term which are defined as [se {An order of magnitude analysis shows that the charac~ teristic velocity in the fluid is ue ~ Raca/L. Assuming large values of Rae compared with unity, the boundary layer thickness is of order 6. ~ L/Ra/?. On the other hand, using the fact that the total heat production in the solid ShL is of same order than the total heat transfer to Rag SKBATL 2 a0) oo the fluid &eATcRa!, then itis easy to show thatthe characteristic temperature difference must be of order ar. =4T. (uy me ( Here AT" is related to the heat generated internally and is defined by AT” — ShL/ky. The Rayleigh number Ra” is given by Ra’ = Ra(AT"), where Ra = gk ATL/ay is the Rayleigh number for the porous medium, with AT being the actual temperature difference across the fluid layer, ‘which is in fact to be obtained from the analysis. Using (11), we then have Rae = Ra’?!”, Therefore, the total mass flow rate me is of the order te ~ Ra pag ~ (2) pe(Sh)'OLN (12) Similarly, the order of magnitude of the transversal, AT, and longitudinal, AT,,, characteristic temperature differ- ences in the solid plate related to the characteristic tem- perature difference, AT, are given by Ata (\ 8)! AT : a ( “) ar. ~ @+#) where 2 — (k/k:)(h/E)Ra;"? and ¢ — h/t. For values of 2 7 the temperature variation in the transversal di- rection in the sold is negligible emall compared with the overall temperature difference and ths scaled thermally thin wall regime. inthis limit the longitudinal temperature variation compared with AT. is of order 1/2. Substituting (9) into Eq, (2) gives fr ~ Of/0n and using this relation, Bq, (3) becomes and oF 1p (Z ey _afety fa ap 2! Oy "Nem Syon By dn? ~ for the fluid-saturated porous medium and gerbe 2 A fe Op” Boat uo for the strip. The boundary conditions (5) to (8) become of 0, 8 OF = 79, = = OF og ay aza I= 2 api? Sip (16) a, Fen 8 atza-d (17) 20, 0 fe O and y 18) Po for y=0 and y (as) Fo as +00 (as) Thus, we have a set of two partial differential equations subject to the boundary conditions (16) to (19) one being parabolic, Eq. (14), and the other one, Eq, (15), being el- liptic, which govern the development of the free convec- tion boundary-layer flow near the strip. This system can be solved numerically and this, together with an asymptotic analysis for both thermally thin wall regime (the temper- ature variations across the strip is negligibly small) and thermal thick wall regime (strong temperature variations in the axial and transversal directions of the strip). The solution of the problem should provide the temperature of the strip 0, = (3, 6.4. %.2) Here, taking advantage of the fact that 2 is very small compared with unity in general, we classify the solutions according to the value of z. For large values of 2/2? (> 1) the transversal temperature variation in the plate is very small and therefore the plate temperature #, can be as- sumed to be a function of the longitudinal coordinate 7 only. It is to be noted that neglecting the transversal temperature variation does not mean neglecting the transversal temperature gradient, which always is impor- tant and should be retained in the analysis. In the fol- lowing section we present numerical solutions of the corresponding problem for 2 = (1) and analyze the limits of large and small values of 2 using both asymptotic and numerical techniques. The temperature variation across the plate must be taken into account for a/:? (1), but the longitudinal heat conduction is then negli- ibly small (except in small regions close to the edges of the plate), leading to a linear variation of the temperature across the plate, 3 Thermally thin wall regime For large values of 2/¢! (31), the non-dimensional transversal temperature variation in the plate is very small, namely, of order «3/2 (<1). Integrating the energy equation (15) across the non-dimensional z coordinate and applying the suitable boundary and compatibility conditions (16) and (17), we obtain hits 1 ef ay PPOP|y-0 This equation must be solved with the adiabatic conditions (18) of the strip and the set of equations given by (14), (16) and (19). In this section, we develop the numerical and asymptotic solutions for large values of 2. (20 3a “Asymptotic limit o> 2 The asymptotic solution of the problem for large values of a (1) is very important and is applicable to many practical cases of metallic plates in air or water (see Cordova