Porosity effect on the linear stability of flow overlying a porous medium.

Abstract

We study how the stability of a homogeneous incompressible fluid flow over a saturated Brinkman porous medium is affected by a change in porosity. We produce neutral curves using the shooting method in the area of bimodality. When the porosity decreases, the topology of these curves changes because of the interplay between two instability modes. The long-wave instability is dominant if the medium is highly porous. In contrast, the short-wave instability is the most significant at low porosity because of high tangential stress at the fluid-medium interface. We identify a stability gap between the neutral curve branches within a narrow range of porosity values. The calculated results show the development and disappearance of this gap when the porosity changes.