Influence d'un écoulement horizontal sur les propriétés linéaires de la convection de fluides viscoélastiques en milieux poreux

Abstract: This paper investigates the instability of a viscoelastic fluid in a saturated porous medium heated from below and subjected to an horizontal through-flow. The Oldroyd-B constitutive equation is used to describe the viscoelastic behavior of diluted polymeric solutions. In the absence of the horizontal flow, the onset of convection can be characterized either by stationary or oscillatory instabilities. A temporal stability analysis is carried out in order to study the combined influence of the viscoelastic properties of the fluid and the main flow on the linear characteristics of these two types of instabilities. It is shown that the presence of the through-flow has a destabilizing effect and that it favors the emergence of mobile transverse rolls (R.T.), among an infinity of three-dimensional unstable modes. The thresholds for the appearance of these R.T., as well as their wavelengths and frequencies, are determined as functions of the dimensionless parameters of the problem. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]