The Effect of Strong Heterogeneity on the Onset of Convection in a Porous Medium

The effect of strong heterogeneity on the onset of convection induced by a vertical density gradient in a saturated porous medium governed by Darcy's law is discussed. The general case, where there is heterogeneity in both the vertical and horizontal directions, and where there is heterogeneity in permeability, thermal conductivity, and applied temperature gradient, is considered. A computer package has been developed to implement an algorithm giving a criterion for instability. This package is applied to the case of a cube partitioned into octants and to the cases where the permeability and thermal conductivity vary continuously across a cube in either a linear or a quadratic manner.