THE ONSET OF DOUBLE-DIFFUSIVE CONVECTION IN A LAYER OF NANOFLUID UNDER ROTATION

Double-diffusive convection in a horizontal layer of nanofluid under rotation heated from below is studied. The nanofluid describes the effects of thermophoresis and Brownian diffusion. Based upon perturbations and linear stability theory, the normal mode analysis method is applied to obtain the dispersion relation characterizing the effect of different parameters when both the boundaries are free. Due to thermal expansion, the nanofluid at the bottom will be lighter than the fluid at the top. Thus, this is a top heavy arrangement which is potentially unstable. In this paper we discuss the influences of various non-dimensional parameters such as rotation, solute gradient, thermo- nanofluid Lewis number, thermo-solutal Lewis number, Soret and Dufour parameter on the stability of stationary convection for the case of free-free boundaries. It is observed that rotation and solute gradient have stabilizing influence on the system. Rotation and solute gradient play important role in the thermal convection of fluid layer and has applications in rotating machineries such as nuclear reactors, petroleum industry, biomechanics etc. and solute gradient finds applications in geophysics, food processing, soil sciences, oil reservoir modeling, oceanography etc. A very good agreement is found between the present paper and earlier published results.