Convective Heat Transfer in a Liquid Saturated Porous Layer

The convective heat transfer in fluid-saturated porous beds either heated from below or heated by distributed sources is investigated for several bed thicknesses and permeabilities. For the case of heating from below, Rayleigh numbers range from about 10 to 10,000. For distributed heat sources, Rayleigh numbers range from about 10 to 1,000. Critical Rayleigh numbers for the onset of convection are estimated as 38 for heating from below and 31.8 for distributed heat sources. Heat transfer results for convection induced by heating from below are in good agreement with analytical upper bound estimates obtained by Gupta and Joseph. (12 refs.)