Penetrative convection in a horizontally isotropic porous layer

Penetrative convection in a horizontally isotropic porous layer is investigated primarily using an internal heat sink model and alternatively, a quadratic density temperature law. Employing the heat sink model, we show that the temporal growth rate for the linearised system is real, which allows us to perform a linear instability analysis. A nonlinear energy analysis is also presented, yielding a global stability threshold. We compare the heat sink model to the quadratic density model and find that the linearised systems are adjoint, implying that the instability boundaries which can be derived from the two models are the same.