INT. CCMM. HEAT MASS TRANSFER 0735-1933/89 $3.00 + .00 Vol. 16, pp. 173-180, 1989 ©Pergamon Press plc Printed in the United States FREE CONVECTION OVER A NONISOTHERMAL BODY IN A POROUS MEDIUM WITH VISCOUS DISSIPATION ABSTRACT A. Nakayama* Department of Energy and Mechanlcal Englneerlng Shlzuoka University, Hamamatsu, 432 Japan I. Pop Faculty of Mathematics Unlverslty of Clu3, R-3400 Clu3, CP 235, Romanla (Cu~.iLsnicated by R. Echlgo) An approximate solution procedure based on the K~rman-Pohlhausen integral relation is proposed for the analysls of the steady free convection boundary layer over a nonlsothermal body of arbltrary shape embedded in a fluld-saturated porous medlum. The effects of the viscous dissipation on heat transfer rates were investigated upon conslderlng the vlscous dlssipatlon term in the energy equa- tion. It is shown that the vlscous dlssipatlon results in lowering the level of the heat transfer rate. INTRODUCTION Natural convection in saturated porous medla has recently recelved conslderable attentlon because of numerous appllcatlons in geophyslcs and energy related englneerlng problems. These problems arlse in geothermal energy converslon, use of flbrous materlals in the thermal insulatlon of bulldlngs, enhanced recovery of petroleum resources, geophysical flows and packed-bed chemical reactors. Excellent reviews of exlstlng theoretical and experimental results have been presented by Cheng [ 1 ], Nleld [ 2 ] and Be3an [ 3 ]. In all these theoretlcal approaches, however, the vlscous dlsslpatlon effects have been neglected from the governing equatlons. The ob3ect of this research note is therefore to present an approxlmate solution of the steady free convection boundary layer over a nonlsothermal body of arbltrary shape embedded in a fluld-saturated porous medium when the vlscous dissipation term is consldered in the energy equation. Similar to Ref. [ 4 ], * Authors names are in alphabetlcal order. 173