Nonlinear stability of a convective motion in a porous layer driven by a horizontally periodic temperature gradient

The nonlinear global exponential pointwise stability of a vertical steady flow driven by a horizontal periodic temperature gradient in a porous layer is performed. It is shown that the stability threshold depends on the supremum of a quadratic functional, having non constant coefficients, and new in the literature on the convection problem. In solving the variational problem, a suitable functional transformation is used.Received: 27 January 2003, Accepted: 10 March 2003, Published online: 12 September 2003 Correspondence toF. Capone