Natural convective boundary-layer flow in a heat generating porous medium with a prescribed wall heat flux

Abstract.

The free convection boundary-layer flow on a vertical surface in a porous medium with local heat generation proportional to (T – T_∞)^p, where T is the local temperature and T_∞ is the ambient temperature, is considered when the surface is thermally insulated. The way in which the flow develops from the leading edge is seen to depend critically on the exponent p. For p ≤ 2 there is a boundary-layer flow for all x > 0, where x measures distance from the leading edge, with the internal heating having a significant effect at large x. For p ≥ 5 there is also a boundary-layer flow to large x but now the internal heating has an increasingly weaker effect as x increases. For 2 < p <  5 the boundary-layer solution breaks down at a finite x, with a singularity developing leading to thermal runaway at a finite distance along the surface.