On multiple steady states for natural convection (low Prandtl number fluid) within porous square enclosures: Effect of nonuniformity of wall temperatures

A Brinkman extended Darcy model has been used to study the effect of spatial nonuniformity of wall temperatures on the multiplicity of steady convective flows within a square porous enclosure saturated with low Prandtl fluid (Pr = 0.026). The convection is assumed to be driven by the hotter bottom wall in conjunction with colder side walls, where bottom-side wall junctions maintain continuity of temperature to represent a more realistic situation. This configuration enforces nonuniformity on either bottom wall or side walls or both bottom and side wall temperatures. The degree of nonuniformity of wall temperatures are varied parametrically in terms of thermal aspect ratio (?) to simulate various possible scenarios of nonuniform bottom/side wall temperatures and steady solution branches are traced in the parameter space of ? to investigate the variation of multiplicity of the flows. A perturbation technique has been used to initiate the steady solution branches, which are then traced by numerical continuation scheme. A penalty finite element approximation in conjunction with Newton-Raphson method and parameter continuation scheme has been used to construct the bifurcation diagrams of various steady branches. This work reveals three steady symmetric branches and four steady asymmetric branches with exhibition of symmetry breaking bifurcation. This work also shows that the nonuniformity of wall temperatures play a crucial role for the existence of multiple solutions as well as the multiplicity of convective flows. � 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.