Numerical Simulations of Free Convection about a Vertical Flat Plate Embedded in a Porous Medium

We consider the free convection about a vertical flat plate embedded in a porous medium within the framework of a boundary layer approximation. In some cases, similarity solutions arise in the modelization of such phenomena, allowing a reduction of the dimension of the problem. We suggest two complementary and rather simple numerical methods to compute such solutions. When possible, the numerical analysis for the two discretizations is performed and convergence results are given. Numerical experiments with a physical model are presented to confirm the efficiency of both approaches.