Thermal instability of a micropolar fluid layer with temperature-dependent viscosity (Q828436)

The authors studied the effect of temperature-dependent viscosity on the onset of thermal convection in micropolar fluid layer heated from below. The validity of principle of exchange of stabilities is investigated for this more general problem by conjugate eigen functions. A single-term Galerkin method is used to find general expressions and dynamically free boundaries. The value of the critical Rayleigh numbers for each condition is computed numerically for the case of stationary convection. The effects of micro-rotation parameters and the viscosity variation parameter on critical Rayleigh numbers are computed numerically.