Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
656937 | International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer | 2015 | 8 Pages |
Abstract
In this article, we have investigated the instability of the liquid-vapour front in a geothermal system with isothermal boundaries. A two-dimensional linear stability analysis of the isothermal basic state shows that the Rayleigh-Taylor mechanism is the dominant contributor to instability. A conditional expression for the critical modified Rayleigh number for different heat transport processes has been found. It has been shown that the spontaneous transition to instability is an artefact of neglecting thermal advection and the imposition of the phase change front to be equidistant from the liquid and vapour boundaries.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Chemical Engineering
Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes
Authors
Zafar Hayat Khan, David Pritchard,