Abstract
The qualitative effect of nonuniform temperature gradient on the linear stability analysis of the Rayleigh-Benard convection problem in a Boussinesquian, viscoelastic fluid-filled, high-porosity medium is studied numerically using the single-term Galerkin technique. The eigenvalue is obtained for free-free, free-rigid, and rigid-rigid boundary combinations with isothermal temperature conditions. Thermodynamics and also the present stability analysis dictates the strain retardation time to be less than the stress relaxation time for convection to set in as oscillatory motions in a high-porosity medium. Furthermore, the analysis predicts the critical eigenvalue for the viscoelastic problem to be less than that of the corresponding Newtonian fluid problem.