Three-Dimensional Free Convection Flow in a Vertical Channel Filled with a Porous Medium

The aim of the present paper is to analyze the three-dimensional flow of a viscous incompressible fluid through a porous medium bounded by two vertical walls, one wall being impermeable and the other is permeable. Approximate solutions of the velocity and temperature fields have been obtained using a perturbation technique. It has been shown that the cross flow increases near the impermeable wall and decreases near the permeable wall with increase in Darcy number, but it decreases with an increase in the source parameter The temperature profile increases with increase in the source parameter and the rate of heat transfer at the plates depends significantly on the source parameter when it becomes sufficiently high. It is also shown that the rate of heat transfer is a conjugate mode of analyzing the flow behavior in the presence of a heat source.