Effect of non-uniform basic temperature gradient on Rayleigh-Benard-Marangoni convection in ferrofluids

Abstract

The effect of different basic temperature gradients on the onset of ferroconvection driven by combined surface tension and buoyancy forces is studied. The lower boundary is assumed to be rigid and either conducting or insulating to temperature perturbations while the upper boundary at which the surface tension acts is free insulating and non-deformable. The resulting eigenvalue problem is solved by the Galerkin technique for various basic temperature gradients. The results indicate that the stability of Rayleigh-Benard-Marangoni ferroconvection is significantly affected by basic temperature gradients and the mechanism for suppressing or augmenting the same is discussed in detail. It is shown that the results obtained under the limiting conditions compare well with the existing ones.