Nonsimilar boundary layer analysis of double-diffusive convection from a vertical truncated cone in a porous medium with variable viscosity

Abstract

This work presents a boundary layer analysis about variable viscosity effects on the double-diffusive convection near a vertical truncated cone in a fluid-saturated porous medium with constant wall temperature and concentration. The viscosity of the fluid is assumed to be an inverse linear function of the temperature. A boundary layer analysis is employed to derive the nondimensional nonsimilar governing equations, and the transformed boundary layer governing equations are solved by the cubic spline collocation method to yield computationally efficient numerical solutions. The obtained results are found to be in good agreement with previous papers on special cases of the problem. Results for local Nusselt and Sherwood numbers are presented as functions of viscosity-variation parameter, buoyancy ratio, and Lewis number. For a porous medium saturated with a Newtonian fluid with viscosity proportional to an inverse linear function of temperature, higher value of viscosity-variation parameter leads to the decrease of the viscosity in fluid flow, thus increasing the fluid velocity as well as the local Nusselt number and the local Sherwood number.