Effect of Gravity Modulation on Single Component Convection in a Couple Stress Fluid with Maxwell-Cattaneo Law

Abstract

The outset of convection in a thin layer of couple stress fluid is analyzed using the linear stability analysis when the fluid is heated from below. In order to assimilate the inertial effects Maxwell-Cattaneo law is used in lieu of the classical Fourier's heat conduction law. The normal mode analysis is used to arrive at the eigenvalues of the perturbed state and a regular perturbation method to find the analytical solutions. The effect of Cattaneo number, couple stress parameter and Prandtl number is discussed and it is concluded that gravity modulation can delay or advance the onset of convection.