Non-Darcy Free Convection of Power-Law Fluids Over a Two-Dimensional Body Embedded in a Porous Medium

Abstract

A boundary layer analysis was presented to study the non-Darcy-free convection of a power-law fluid over a non-isothermal two-dimensional body embedded in a porous medium. The Ostwald-de Waele power-law model was used to characterize the non-Newtonian fluid behavior. Similarity solutions were obtained with variations in surface temperature or surface heat flux. In view of the fact that most of the non-Newtonian fluids have large Prandtl numbers, this study was directed toward such fluids. The effects of the porous medium parameters, k1 and k2, body shape parameter, m, and surface thermal variations parameter, p, as well as the power-law index, n, were examined. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.