Convection with heat flux prescribed on the boundaries of the system. I. The effect of temperature dependence of material properties

Abstract

We study the bifurcation to steady two-dimensional convection with the heat flux prescribed on the fluid boundaries. The fluid is weakly non-Boussinesq on account of a slight temperature dependence of its material properties. Using expansions in the spirit of shallow water theory based on the preference for large horizontal scales in fixed flux convection, we derive an evolution equation for the horizontal structure of convective cells. In the steady state, this reduces to a simple nonlinear ordinary differential equation. When the horizontal scales of the cells exceed a certain critical size, the bifurcation to steady convection is subcritical and the degree of subcriticality increases with increasing cell size.     

Comparison between the Gauss’ law method and the zero current method to calculate multi-species ionic diffusion in saturated uncharged porous materials

A novel numerical method based on the finite element approach is established for the zero current method approach for calculating multi-species ionic diffusion. The proposed numerical method uses the direct calculation of the coupled set of equations in favor of the staggering approach. A one-step truly implicit time stepping scheme is adopted together with an implementation of a modified Newton–Raphson iteration scheme for search of equilibrium at each considered time step calculation. Results from the zero current case are compared with existing results from the solutions of the more general Gauss’ law method.