Weakly Nonlinear Stability Analysis of a Nanofluid in a Horizontal Porous Layer Using a Multidomain Spectral Collocation Method

• Main Author: Noreldin, Osman A.I
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: IntechOpen 01.01.2018
• Subjects: Differential Equations; Mathematics
• ISBN: 9781789230505; 1789230500
• DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.71066

In this chapter, we present a weakly nonlinear stability analysis of the flow of a nanofluid in a porous medium with stress-free boundary conditions. Some previous studies have investigated cross-diffusion in a nanofluid layer although in most cases these studies mostly deal with linear stability analysis. It is important to study the nonlinear stability in flows subject to cross-diffusion due to the wide range of applications where such flows arise such as in hydrothermal growth, compact heat exchanges, the solidification of binary mixtures, geophysical systems, solar pond, etc. Here we consider flow between parallel plates with an applied magnetic field and zero nanoparticle flux at the boundaries. A truncated Fourier series is introduced reducing the flow equations to a Lorenz-type system of nonlinear evolution equations. The multidomain spectral method is used to solve the equations that describe the growth of the convection amplitudes. The solutions are obtained as sets of trajectories in the phase space. Some interesting spiral trajectories and their sensitivity to the Rayleigh number are given.