Staggered grids for three-dimensional convection of a multicomponent fluid in a porous medium

Convection in a porous medium may produce strong nonuniqueness of patterns. We study this phenomena for the case of a multicomponent fluid and develop a mimetic finite-difference scheme for the three-dimensional problem. Discretization of the Darcy equations in the primitive variables is based on staggered grids with five types of nodes and on a special approximation of nonlinear terms. This scheme is applied to the computer study of flows in a porous parallelepiped filled by a two-component fluid and with two adiabatic lateral planes. We found that the continuous family of steady stable states exists in the case of a rather thin enclosure. When the depth is increased, only isolated convective regimes may be stable. We demonstrate that the non-mimetic approximation of nonlinear terms leads to the destruction of the continuous family of steady states.