Poiseuille flow in a fluid overlying a porous medium

Abstract

This paper numerically investigates the instability of Poiseuille flow in a fluid overlying a porous medium saturated with the same fluid. A three-layer configuration is adopted. Namely, a Newtonian fluid overlying a Brinkman porous transition layer, which in turn overlies a layer of Darcy-type porous material. It is shown that there are two modes of instability corresponding to the fluid and porous layers, respectively. The key parameters which affect the stability characteristics of the system are the depth ratio between the porous and fluid layers and the transition layer depth.