Adv. Studies Theor. Phys., Vol. 2, 2008, no.

10, 473 - 478

The Multiple Solutions of Laminar Flow in a Uniformly Porous Channel with Suction/Injection
Botong Li1, Liancun Zheng1, Xinxin Zhang2, Lianxi Ma3
1

Department of Mathematics and Mechanics University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China leedonlion408@163.com, liancunzheng@sina.com Mechanical Engineering School University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China
3 2

Department of Physics, Blinn College, Bryan, TX 77805, USA malianxi@gmail.com

Abstract: This paper presents a numerical investigation for laminar flow in a uniformly porous channel with suction/injection at both moving walls. The characteristics for the existence of multiple solutions to the problem are numerically established for values of Reynolds number and the velocity coefficient. Mathematics Subject Classification: Numerical hydromechanics Keywords: Porous channel, moving walls, shooting method, multiple solutions

1Introduction
Following the pioneering work of Berman [1], the problems of the steady, incompressible, laminar flow in channels or circular pipes with uniformly porous walls with suction/injection at both walls have attracted considerable attention during the last few decades. The main reason for it is probably that fluid flow is produced

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Botong Li, Liancun Zheng, Xinxin Zhang, Lianxi Ma

industrially in increasing quantities and is therefore just likely to be pumped in a plant. The great majority of theoretical investigations in this field described the fluid flow in the vicinity of the surface with the aid of similarity solutions [2-6]. The purpose of this paper is to present a numerical investigation for this problem. A special emphasis is given to the formulation of boundary layer equations, which may provide the multiple similarity solutions.

2Formulation of the problem

Consider the steady, incompressible, laminar flow along a two-dimensional channel with porous walls through which fluid is injected/extracted with uniform speed vw . Let the channel width be 2h and introducing the dimensionless variable:

y h the Navier-Stokes equations and the continuity equation are written as:

(1)

2u 1 2u 1 P u v u + = + 2 + 2 2 x h x x h
2v 1 2v 1 P v v v + = + 2 + 2 2 h x h x h

(2)

(3)

The boundary conditions are:

u ( x, 1) = 0 , v( x, 1) = vw ,

u ( x, 0) = 0 , v( x, 0) = 0

(4)

The problem is reduced to the following equation:

f + R[ f 2 ff ] = k
where k a constant and the suction Reynolds number of the flow is taken as: v h R( w )

(5)

(6)

The boundary conditions (4) become:

f (0) = 0 f (0) = 0 f (1) = 1 f (1) = 0

(7)

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475

Watson investigated analytically a similar flow of fluid which is driven by uniform steady suction through the porous and accelerating walls of the channel. The problem is also reduced to equation (5) with the following boundary conditions:

f (0) = 0 f (0) = 0 f (1) = 1 + k0 f (1) = k0

Where k 0 is the velocity coefficient of accelerating walls ( k0 (1, 0] ).

(8)

3Numerical Investigation
In order to obtain the numerical solution, we transfer the problems (5) and (8) to a system of four first-order equations as follows f = u v = w v = w w = Rfw Ruv The corresponding boundary conditions are: f (0) = 0, v(0) = 0 f (1) = 1 + k0 , u (1) = k0 We introduce the parameters of t and s such that (10) (9)

u (0) = t , w(0) = s

(11)

The problem now is to find the parameters t , s . We denote the solutions of (9)-(10) as f ( , t1 , t 2 ) , u ( , t1 , t 2 ) , v( , t1 , t 2 ) and w( , t1 , t 2 ) . Thus the following equations are solved by using the Newtonian technique.

(t1 , t 2 ) = f (1, t1 , t 2 ) 1 k 0 = 0 (t1 , t 2 ) = u (1, t1 , t 2 ) k 0 = 0

(12)

4Numerical Results

The Watson problems is discussed by dividing the value of the suction Reynolds number into three sections for different velocity coefficient and some interesting numerical results are presented in figures 1-4. Figures 1-2 show the distribution characteristic of values of f (1) with

R ( R > 0 or R < 0 ) .The results will be divided into three sections.

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Botong Li, Liancun Zheng, Xinxin Zhang, Lianxi Ma

For k 0 = 0 , Only a single solution is observed for each value of R [0,12.165) Triple solutions are found for each value of R (12.165, +) ; Only a single solution is observed for R < 0 . For k0 = 0.5 , only a single solution for each value of R [0, 25) Triple solutions for each value of R (25, +) ; Only a single solution for R < 0 . For k0 = 0.75 , only a single solution for each R [0, 48) Triple solutions for each value of R (48, +) ; Only a single solution for R < 0 . Figures 3-4 show the unique velocity profiles and the unique shear profiles for
R = 10 with different values of velocity parameters k0 .

5Conclusions
The multiple solutions are investigated for laminar uniform flow in a channel with special suction or injection at both porous walls for certain parameters and the transfer characteristics are discussed in detail.
Acknowledgement: The work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundations of China (No.50476083).

References
[1] A.S.Berman, Laminar flow in channels with porous walls, J.Appl. Phys, 24(1953), 1232-1235. [2] A. MG, C Lu and S P H, Asymptotic behavior of solutions of a similarity equation for laminar flows in channels with porous walls, SIAM. J. Applied Mathematics, 49(1992), 139-162. [3] C.L, On existence of multiple solutions of a boundary value problem from pipe flow, Q. A. M., 2(1994), 361.

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477

[4] C.L, On the asymptotic solution of laminar channel flow with large suction, J. M. A, 28 (1997), 1113-1134. [5] E.B.B.Watson, W.H.H.Banks, M.B.Zaturska, et. al., On transition to chaos in two-dimensional channel flow symmetrically driven by accelerating walls, J.Fluid Mech., 212(1990), 451-485. [6] S. P. Hastings, C. Lu and A. D. Macgillivray, A boundary value problem with multiple solutions from the theory of laminar flow, SIAM. J. Math. Anal, 23(1992), 201-208.
Received: November 10, 2007

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Botong Li, Liancun Zheng, Xinxin Zhang, Lianxi Ma

-f''(1) 100
90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100R
1 -800 -700 -600 -500 -400 -300 -200 -100 0 3 4

-f''(1)
k0 = 0 k0 = - 0. 5

k0 = 0 k0 = - 0 . 5

k0 = - 0. 75

k0 = - 0 . 7 5

Fig.1 Multiple values of f (1) with

R(R > 0)

Fig.2 Unique value of f (1) with

R ( R < 0)

f'

1.4 1.2 1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0 -0.2 -0.4
-1 -2 -4

k0=0
-6

k0 =0

k0=-0.5

-5

k0 =- 0. 5 k0=- 0. 75

k0=-0.75

f ' ' -3

-0.6 -0.8 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0

0 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0

Fig.3 Unique velocity profiles for R

= 10

Fig.4 Unique shear stress profile for R

= 10