Numerical study of double-diffusive natural convection in a porous cavity using the Darcy-Brinkman formulation

This paper deals with natural convection in confined porous media, driven by cooperating thermal and solutal buoyancy forces. The physical model for the momentum conservation equation makes use of the Brinkman extension of the classical Darcy equation, and the set of coupled equations is solved using a finite volume approach. The numerical simulations presented here span a wide range of the main parameters (the Rayleigh and Darcy numbers) in the domain of positive buoyancy numbers and for Le > 1. When possible, the results are compared with previous numerical data or existing scaling laws. The results are mainly analyzed in terms of the average heat and mass transfers at the walls of the enclosure. Although the mass transfer characteristics are fairly well predicted by the scale analysis, it is shown that convective heat transfer has a specific behavior in given ranges of the governing parameters.