Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 iii Paper 84 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use the steady slender-plume model implicit in the requested height-only similarity. Put and introduce permeability , dynamic viscosity , fluid heat capacity per volume , and effective transverse thermal diffusivity . These material constants are needed to give dimensional fluxes. Take to be Darcy velocities, so the thermal transport coefficient for the steady equation is when is the effective conductivity of the saturated medium.
The Darcy law with gravity isThe ambient is hydrostatic with . A slender plume's pressure correction has vertical gradient smaller than the buoyancy term by the squared width-to-height ratio. Indeed, incompressibility gives of order width/height, and the horizontal Darcy relation makes the pressure correction of order . Its vertical derivative has the additional inverse-height factor. Thus the leading vertical Darcy balance isThe proportionality is to temperature excess , not absolute ; the velocity vanishes in the unheated ambient. This is the local buoyancy/drag balance of a porous thermal plume, rather than a free-fluid inertial momentum balance.
The governing continuity equation and steady advection-diffusion equation, with axial conduction neglected in the slender high-Rayleigh number limit, areChoose the streamfunction convention , . It enforces continuity identically and givesA change to the opposite streamfunction convention changes the sign of , not the physical velocity or temperature.
The upward convected excess heat flux per unit source length isThis is the quantity denoted in this question; it differs from Question 2's buoyancy-flux symbol. In conservative form the heat equation is . Integrate across the plume:The temperature anomaly and its derivative vanish far from the plume; lateral entrainment brings in ambient-temperature fluid and thus no excess heat. There is no heat source or sink above the line source. Transverse conduction redistributes this heat without removing its total, while axial conduction is negligible in the stated approximation. In an unsteady plume a heat-storage term would have to be retained, so the convective flux alone would not in general be independent of height.
Let . It is constant because . To obtain similarity exponents without guessing a profile, write the width as and central velocity as . The fixed heat flux requires constant, hence . Balancing vertical advection, including its continuity-required horizontal component, against transverse conduction gives , hence . Thus and , and the streamfunction scale is proportional to . A suitable similarity form isThe volume flux per unit span is and therefore grows as ; it tends to zero at the ideal source. Thus the zero-source-volume requirement fixes the absence of an additive source-length scale, not a finite temperature at the singular point.
Substitution into the streamfunction equation givesChoose the scale normalization and . Reflection symmetry makes odd, so the relevant conditions are , , , with finite ; the heat input fixes the remaining dimensional scale. The nonlinear similarity equation becomesIntegrate once. Since in the ambient, the integration constant is zero, giving . A second integration gives ; the normalized far limit fixes . Separation with now yields the complete positive-plume profileIt satisfies the symmetry and decay conditions; the solution of the first-order initial-value equation is unique. The physical heat strength is determined using , obtained by substituting :Equivalently, defineThe hyperbolic-secant porous plume profile and its velocity field are thenIn particular . The far horizontal velocities are inward, , supplying the entrained ambient volume. They are consistent with .
Finally use specific Darcy-flux moments, per unit source length, for the requested flux relationships. The volume flux, kinematic momentum flux and buoyancy flux areThus the physical mass flux is , and the conventional density-weighted Darcy second moment is . If intrinsic pore-velocity momentum flux is required instead, a uniform porosity gives ; keeping this convention distinct does not change the displayed Darcy moments. These are the conserved momentum flux of a porous thermal plume relationships. Constancy of follows here from proportionality of temperature and velocity plus heat conservation, not from ignoring the drag on the solid matrix in a total momentum balance.
The ideal source has zero limiting volume flux but divergent central speed and temperature. Consequently the Boussinesq approximation and slender-plume limit describe the region outside a finite source, where and . Indeed is the local high-Rayleigh condition. These limits improve downstream; they do not make the singular similarity field a literal finite-temperature solution at .