Numerical solutions for unsteady rotating high-porosity medium channel Couette hydrodynamics

Abstract

We investigate theoretically and numerically the unsteady, viscous, incompressible, hydrodynamic, Newtonian Couette flow in a Darcy–Forchheimer porous medium parallel-plate channel rotating with uniform angular velocity about an axis normal to the plates. The upper plate is translating at uniform velocity with the lower plate stationary. The two-dimensional reduced Navier–Stokes equations are transformed to a pair of nonlinear dimensionless momentum equations, neglecting convective inertial terms. The network simulation method, based on a thermoelectric analogy, is employed to solve the transformed dimensionless partial differential equations under prescribed boundary conditions. We examine here graphically the effect of Ekman number, Forchheimer number and Darcy number on the shear stresses at the plates over time. Excellent agreement is also obtained for the infinite permeability i.e. purely fluid (vanishing porous medium) case (Da→∞) with the analytical solutions of Guria et al (2006 Int. J. Nonlinear Mechanics 41 838–43). Backflow is observed in certain cases. Increasing Ekman number, Ek (corresponding to decreasing Coriolis force) is found to accentuate the primary shear stress component (τx) considerably but to reduce magnitudes of the secondary shear stress component (τy). The flow is also found to be accelerated generally with increasing Darcy number and decelerated with increasing Forchheimer number. The present model has applications in geophysical flows, chemical engineering systems and also fundamental studies in fluid dynamics.