Transport in Porous Media, Vol.99, No.1, 55-71, 2013
A New Insight into the Convective Boundary Condition
The steady mixed convection boundary layer flows over a vertical surface adjacent to a Darcy porous medium and subject respectively to (i) a prescribed constant wall temperature, (ii) a prescribed variable heat flux, , and (iii) a convective boundary condition are compared to each other in this article. It is shown that, in the characteristic plane spanned by the dimensionless flow velocity at the wall and the dimensionless wall shear stress , every solution of one of these three flow problems at the same time is also a solution of the other two ones. There also turns out that with respect to the governing mixed convection and surface heat transfer parameters and , every solution of the flow problem (iii) is infinitely degenerate. Specifically, to the very same flow solution there corresponds a whole continuous set of values of and which satisfy the equation . For the temperature solutions, however, the infinite degeneracy of the velocity solutions becomes lifted. These and further outstanding features of the convective problem (iii) are discussed in the article in some detail.
Keywords:Darcy porous media;Mixed convection;Vertical surface;Convective boundary conditions;Self-similar solutions