NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF EHD INSTABILITY OF NATURAL CONVECTION IN A VERTICAL DIELECTRIC FLUID SATURATED ANISOTROPIC POROUS LAYER

The stability of natural convection in an anisotropic vertical dielectric fluid saturated porous layer is investigated in the presence of a uniform horizontal AC electric field numerically using Galerkin method. The porous medium is assumed to be anisotropic both in permeability as well as thermal diffusivity. The flow in the porous medium is described by Brinkman-Wooding-Forchheimer-extended Darcy model. The critical Grashof number is extracted with respect to wave number for different values of physical parameters. It is observed that increase in the Forchheimer number, mechanical and thermal anisotropy parameters exhibit stabilizing effect on the system, while an opposite trend is noticed with increasing Darcy number and AC electric Rayleigh number. The effect of increasing Prandtl number has a destabilizing effect on the system. Besides, simulations of secondary flow and energy spectrum are analyzed for various values of physical parameters.