Experimental confirmation and analytical results of centrifugally-driven free convection in rotating porous media

Experimental confirmation of theoretical results related to centrifugally-d riven free convection in porous media is presented. Theoretically, an exten sion of Darcy's law is required for analyzing the centrifugal buoyancy effe ct a process that requires both theoretical and experimental justification; otherwise, the centrifugal buoyancy term can be regarded as insignificantl y small and can be neglected. This paper's major objective is to provide th is theoretical and experimental justification. The theoretical part of this paper consists of providing the derivation of the appropriate governing eq uations and analytical results obtained by means of a perturbation techniqu e. The experimental part of this paper focuses on qualitative convection re sults in a rotating Hele-Shaw cell Hele-Shaw cells play an important role i n providing an analogous experimental tool to analyze two-dimensional flow and heat transfer in porous media. The temperature and flowfields resulting from centrifugally-driven free convection in a rotating Hele-Shaw cell are visualized by using a thermosensitive liquid-crystal tracer. The experimen tal results are compared qualitatively with theoretical predictions of flow and temperature fields in a rotating porous layer.