Thermal convection instability of two miscible viscous fluids in a Hele-Shaw cell

Abstract

The onset of convection in two superimposed miscible fluid layers is investigated in the configuration of a geometric Hele-Shaw cell using linear stability analysis. The two fluids have different densities. We neglect the surface tension and chemical diffusion at the interface which is assumed of small amplitude. We consider only the asymptotic case, where the Prandtl number’s order is of the order of unity or larger than unity. We show, in the Hele-Shaw configuration, which can simulate convection in porous media, that the onset of convection can be either stationary or oscillatory depending on the Buoyancy number, B (the ratio of the stabilizing chemical density anomaly to the destabilizing thermal density anomaly), which depends on the viscosity and layer height ratios. When the buoyancy number is lower than a critical value, Bc, oscillating convection occurs in the whole cell height, however beyond Bc, the stratified regime develops without deformation of the interface and convection occurs separately in each layer. In this paper, the transition from oscillatory regime to stratified regime is visualised by using the streamlines at the onset of convection

Keywords

• Thermal convection
• Two superimposed fluid layers
• Miscible fluids
• Hele-Shaw cell
• Buoyancy number