COMBINED BOUNDARY AND INERTIA EFFECTS FOR FULLY-DEVELOPED MIXED CONVECTION IN A VERTICAL CHANNEL EMBEDDED IN POROUS-MEDIA

The fully developed laminar mixed convection in a vertical channel emb edded in porous media has been solved by using non-Darcy flow model. T hrough proper manipulation of nondimensional variables and parameters, the governing equations are derived and the thermal boundary conditio ns on the left and right walls can be prescribed as isothermal-isother mal, isothermal-isoflux, or isoflux-isothermal, respectively. Includin g the Darcian force, buoyancy force and boundary effect, the exact sol utions for temperature and velocity profiles are obtained. Meanwhile, parametric zones for the occurrence of flow reversal based on the anal ytical solutions are presented. Finally, the numerical solution is als o provided to investigate their further influence due to the existence of inertia effect.