Conjugate heat transfer inside a porous channel

Abstract

Analytical and numerical analyses have been performed for fully developed forced convection in a fluid-saturated porous medium channel bounded by two parallel plates. The channel walls are assumed to be finite in thickness. Conduction heat transfer inside the channel wall is also accounted and the full problem is treated as a conjugate heat transfer problem. The flow in the porous material is described by the Darcy–Brinkman momentum equation. The outer surfaces of the solid walls are treated as isothermal. A temperature dependent volumetric heat generation is considered inside the solid wall only. Analytical expressions for velocity, temperature, and Nusselt number are obtained after simplifying and solving the governing differential equations with reasonable approximations. Subsequent results obtained by numerical calculations show an excellent agreement with the analytical results.