Onset of Darcy-Bénard convection using a thermal non-equilibrium model (Q1614555)

The paper studies the onset of free convection in a porous layer heated from below, with emphasis on how the criterion for the onset of convection is modified when the solid and fluid phases are not in local thermal equilibrium (LTE). The governing non-dimensional equations are first solved numerically for a range of governing parameters. It is shown that the LTE limit of the non-LTE analysis does indeed recover the classical LTE results. It is also shown that both the critical Rayleigh number and wavenumber are modified by the presence of thermal non-LTE effects. The authors also present asymptotic solutions for both small and large values of scaled inter-phase heat transfer coefficient, \(H\). The comparison of asymptotic solutions with numerical ones is excellent. It is found that for intermediate values of \(H\) the critical wavenumber is always larger than \(\pi\), the critical value for the LTE case. However, in some cases this critical wavenumber may be very large compared with \(\pi\).