Rayleigh-Bénard convection in a viscoelastic fluid-filled high-porosity medium with nonuniform basic temperature gradient (Q5939672)

Summary: The qualitative effect of nonuniform temperature gradient on linear stability of Rayleigh-Bénard convection in a Boussinesq viscoelastic fluid-filled high-porosity medium is studied numerically using single-term Galerkin technique. The eigenvalue is obtained for free-free, free-rigid, and rigid-rigid boundary combinations with isothermal temperature conditions. Thermodynamics and stability analysis dictates the strain retardation time to be less than the stress relaxation time for convection to set in as oscillatory motions in a high-porosity medium. Furthermore, the analysis predicts the critical eigenvalue for viscoelastic problem to be less than that for the corresponding Newtonian fluid problem.