Transient Free Convective Flow over a Vertical Cone Embedded in a Thermally Stratified Medium

Unsteady natural convection flow of a viscous and incompressible flow over a vertical cone immersed in a stable thermally stratified medium is theoretically studied in this paper. The dimensionless coupled partial differential boundary layer equations are solved numerically using an efficient and unconditionally stable finite-difference scheme of Crank-Nicolson type. The effects of Prandtl number and stratification parameter on the velocity and temperature profiles on the flow and heat transfer characteristics have been determined and discussed in detail. The present results are compared with available results from the open literature and are found to be in good agreement. We notice that natural convection flow over a vertical surface embedded in porous media also occurs in several engineering problems such as those encountered in the design of pebble-bed nuclear reactors, catalytic reactors, and compact heat exchangers, in geothermal energy conversion, in the use of fibrous materials, in the thermal insulation of buildings, in the heat transfer from storage of agricultural products which generate heat as a result of metabolism, in petroleum reservoirs, in nuclear wastes, etc.