FINITE DIFFERENCES ANALYSIS ON NONUNIFORM MESH FOR FREE CONVECTION IN A POROUS MEDIUM AND COMPARISON WITH SIMILARITY APPROACH

In this study, a numerical simulation of steady and laminar free convection flow over a heated vertical flat plate embedded in an unbounded saturated porous medium is presented. A computer program based on the finite differences method, is developed to obtain numerical solutions for resulting governing equations of mass, Darcy, and energy. Afterward, we validated our computational code by comparing the obtained results to those of the similarity approach. Subsequently, we conducted a parametric study of all parameters involved in the problem of heat transfer and flow. This study has been accompanied by the graphic representations and detailed analyses at the physical character.