International Journal of Fluid Mechanics Research, Vol. 32, No. 5, 2005 Natural Convection Flow in a Rotating Fluid Over a Vertical Plate Embedded in a Thermally Stratified High-Porosity Medium † A. J. Chamkha Manufacturing Engineering Department The Public Authority for Applied Education and Training PO Box 42325, Shuweikh, 70654, Kuwait H. S. Takhar Engineering Department, Manchester Metropolitan University Oxford Rd., Manchester, M1 5GD, UK G. Nath Department of Mathematics, Indian Institute of Science Bangalore-560012, India An analysis has been carried out to study the natural convection flow in a rotating fluid over a vertical plate embedded in a thermally strati- fied high-porosity medium. The nonlinear coupled parabolic partial differ- ential equations have been solved numerically by using an implicit finite- difference scheme. The flow and temperature fields are strongly influenced by the thermal stratification, porosity, inertia, Rossby number, and Prandtl number, whereas they are weakly dependent on the permeability parameter. *** Nomenclature a gradient of the ambient temperature, K/m; C dimensionless inertia parameter; C * dimensional inertia parameter, 1/m; C fx local skin-friction coefficient along the x direction; C fy local skin-friction coefficient along the y direction; g gravitational acceleration, m/s 2 ; Gr L Grashof number; K dimensionless permeability of the porous medium; K * dimensionless permeability parameter, m 2 ; † Received 08.08.2005. 511 ISSN 1064-2277 c  2005 Begell House, Inc. Electronic Data Center, http://edata-center.com Downloaded 2006-3-1 from IP 137.148.140.132 by Rama Gorla