Impact of porous media heterogeneity on convective mixing in a Rayleigh–Bénard instability

This work studies the effect of the heterogeneity of a porous medium on convective mixing. We consider a system in which a Rayleigh-Bénard instability is triggered by a temperature difference between the top and bottom boundaries. Heterogeneity is represented by multi-Gaussian log-normally distributed permeability fields. We explore the effect of the Rayleigh number, the variance and correlation length of the log-permeability field on the fingering patterns, heat flux, mixing state and flow structure. Heat flux increases for all heterogeneous cases compared to the homogeneous ones. When heterogeneity is weak and the horizontal correlation length small, flux exhibits minimal sensitivity to the variance of the log-permeability. When the correlation length increases, flux increases proportionally to the log-permeability variance. The mixing state is evaluated through the temperature variance and the intensity of segregation. Both take higher values, compared to their homogeneous analogues, when the correlation length and the variance of the permeability are increased. This indicates that even if heat flux increases, the system is less well mixed. The flow structure shows that in homogeneous and weakly heterogeneous cases there is a relation between the location of high strain rates and stagnation points, while for strongly heterogeneous cases, high strain rate zones are linked to high permeability areas near the boundaries, where temperature plumes originate. The interface width tends to decrease as the variance and the correlation length of the permeability field are augmented, suggesting that the interface undergoes greater stretching in heterogeneous porous media. • Heterogeneity in the permeability field increases heat flux. • Heterogeneity induces fluid segregation. • Formation of thermal plumes linked to high permeability areas.