BUOYANCY EFFECTS ON UNSTEADY REACTIVE VARIABLE PROPERTIES FLUID FLOW IN A CHANNEL FILLED WITH A POROUS MEDIUM

This paper studies the unsteady reactive flow and heat transfer properties between two uniformly porous plates with suction/injection under the influence of constant pressure gradient, convective cooling, and buoyancy force. The channel is filled with a porous medium, and the fluid is assumed to be incompressible with variable viscosity and variable thermal conductivity. The coupled nonlinear partial differential equations for momentum and energy balance are numerically solved using a semi-discretization finite difference method coupled with a fourth-order Runge-Kutta-Fehlberg integration scheme to obtain the velocity and temperature profiles. The effects of the important thermophysical parameters on the flow velocity, fluid temperature, skin friction, and Nusselt number are simulated and explained. The buoyancy force was observed to increase the flow velocity, skin friction, wall heat transfer rate, and fluid temperature. Injection and suction as well as the increase in the thermal conductivity parameter were found to have a significant cooling effect on the flow system.