On the spatial stability of free-convection flows in a saturated porous medium (Q1087093)

We consider the free-convection boundary-layer flow in a saturated porous medium adjacent to an impermeable vertical surface. It is assumed that the surface is supplying heat to the porous medium in a prescribed way, which varies along the surface. The problem, which relates to the spatial stability of the known similarity solutions of the boundary-layer equations, is formulated and certain analytical results are presented for special cases. For this special class of flows we are able to determine analytically the first eigenvalue for all relevant parameter values and thereby show that such flows are spatially stable.