Wall-Driven Versus Pressure Gradient-Driven Flows in Porous Media

The heat transfer characteristics of two boundary layer flows past an isothermal plane surface adjacent to a saturated Darcy–Brinkman porous medium is compared to each other in this paper. The flows are driven either by a stretching of the adjacent plane boundary, or by an external pressure gradient. It is found that below a threshold value $\tilde{P}r_{*} $ of the modified Prandtl number $\tilde{P}r$ , the Nussselt number in case of the pressure gradient-driven flow is larger than in case of the wall- driven flow, while for $\tilde{P}r>\tilde{P}r_{*} $ the flow driven by the moving wall provides a more efficient heat transfer mechanism. The dependence of $\tilde{P}r_{*} $ on the Darcy number is also discussed in detail.