Technical note: Non-darcy mixed convection from a horizontal surface with variable surface heat flux in a porous medium

This article investigates numerically the heat transfer characteristics of non-Darcy mired convection over a horizontal flat plate with nonuniform surface heat flux in a porous medium. The surface heat flux is assumed to vary as a power of the axial coordinate measured from the leading edge of the plate. The entire regime of mired convection (including the two limits of pure forced convection and pure free convection) is divided into two regions, namely the forced convection dominated regime and the free convection dominated regime. The effects of flow inertia force, solid boundary shear, near-wall porosity variation, and thermal dispersion are considered in the present analysis. The Darcy-Brinkman-Forchheimer equation is used to model the motion of fluid through the porous medium, and the porosity variation is approximated by an exponential function. The local Nusselt numbers, valid for the entire mired convection regime, are presented for representative values of governing parameters.