The onset of double diffusive convection in a rotating bi-disperse porous medium

Abstract

It is well known that when a horizontal layer of fluid is heated from below, a thermal boundary layer of less dense and hot fluid rises up. When this boundary layer becomes unstable, convective motion in the fluid above sets in. Forecasting when instabilities take place is essential. When a salt dissolved in a fluid saturating a porous medium heated from below is considered, simultaneous mass diffusion and thermal diffusion occur. Unlike the diffusion of heat, the diffusion of salt can take place only through the fluid phase, so an additional physical effect has to be considered: the Soret effect, that is the mass flux created by a temperature gradient. In the present paper the onset of convection in a rotating layer of bi-disperse porous medium saturated by a binary fluid mixture, taking into account the Soret effect, is analysed. Linear stability analysis is performed in order to determine the instability thresholds for the onset of convection via a steady state (stationary convection) and via an oscillatory state (oscillatory convection). Nonlinear stability analysis is performed to obtain the global stability threshold with respect to the L^2-norm.