DARCY-FORCHHEIMER NATURAL, FORCED AND MIXED CONVECTION HEAT-TRANSFER IN NON-NEWTONIAN POWER-LAW FLUID-SATURATED POROUS-MEDIA

The governing equation for Darcy-Forchheimer flow of non-Newtonian ine lastic power-law fluid through porous media has been derived from firs t principles. Using this equation, the problem of Darcy-Forchheimer na tural, forced, and mixed convection within the porous media saturated with a power-law fluid has been solved using the approximate integral method. It is observed that a similarity solution exists specifically for only the case of an isothermal vertical flat plate embedded in the porous media. The results based on the approximate method, when compa red with existing exact solutions show an agreement of within a maximu m error bound of 2.5%.